What is medicine? Integrating indigenous with scientific ontologies in ayahuasca research
This presentation was given at the Harvard Divinity School Conference on “Alternative Spiritualities of Celebration, Resistance, and Accountability: Engaging Our Colonial and Decolonial Contexts”, in April 2024. The revival of psychedelics in Western research raises issues about the underappreciation of ayahuasca’s sacred significance and the Indigenous wisdom associated with it. Such oversight reflects a broader […]
Reconnecting with Ancestral Wisdom: A Conversation with the Yawanawá
In this conversation, Shaneihu, Yawatume, and Utxi Yawanawá – who come from the Rio Gregorio Indigenous Land, in the state of Acre in Brazil, talk to students at the University of Exeter about their traditions, chants, and medicines.
Indigenous rituals, Amazonian cosmologies, and the psychedelic renaissance
In this conversation, Fê Gebara delves into the realm of Western psychedelic research and practice juxtaposing them with Indigenous cosmologies and traditions in the Amazon. She sheds light on the repercussions of Western approaches to sacred medicines, which are often characterized by objectivity, reductionism, and commodification and tend to ignore essential compounds of traditional healing, […]
Indigenous spiritualities: cultural appropriation or the last salvation?
This presentation was given to Harvard Divinity School – “Uses and Abuses of Power in Alternative Spiritualities Conference” in April 2023. Here I analyse how Indigenous spiritualities are transforming non-indigenous realities. I investigate the way non-indigenous people are using them to overcome health issues (i.e. depression), but also how they are being commodified for other […]
The social-cultural history and present of Ayahuasca
This presentation was given as part of the Breaking Convention at the Univiserty of Exeter – UK. Here I offer a journey through the historical socio-cultural aspects of ayahuasca, including its origins, past and present uses, and purposes. I discuss if and how Indigenous cosmologies and the practice of ayahuasca are being incorporated into the […]
Which Development to Sustain? Indigenous Practices and Webs of Trust
Transforming our World: Participatory-driven Approaches and the Sustainable Development Goals. Bluo Verda. 2022. This is a lecture given as part of a 3-week online course focusing on using participatory methods as essential transdisciplinary and cross-sectoral tools for achieving Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). The course was organized in September 2022 by Bluo Verda, a diaspora organization […]
From Crises to Cosmos: Plant Medicines and Behaviour Change
Lecture given online at Harvard Divinity School Inaugural Conference on Ecological Spiritualities in April 2022. At this moment of profound ecological and health crisis, there is an urgent call for a fundamental rethinking of our attitudes toward the natural environment. This presentation explores the role of Amazonian plant medicines in promoting indigenous spirituality and how […]
Rethinking the Economy after Coronavirus
Recent responses to the COVID-19 pandemic has spurred reactions to how access to wild animals and their products may spread infectious disease from such animals to humans. This has unleashed an onslaught of debate in the scientific and related policy literature on nature conservation, human and animal rights, and efforts to alleviate global poverty among […]
Indigenous Ontologies and New Becomings
Since COVID-19 started many indigenous elders have died, raising fears that the pandemic may inflict irreparable damage on Indigenous ancestral ontologies. This presentation shows how Amazonian indigenous ontologies could help in changing anthropocentric attitudes and transitioning from the COVID-19 crisis. Global efforts to address crises are often characterized as ‘blueprints’ devoid of political and cultural […]
Pandemics, conservation and human nature relations
In this presentation, we look at the links between pandemics, conservation, and human-nature relations. We start by questioning who is invading whom? The most serious pandemics in recorded history have their causes rooted in unsustainable anthropic intervention on land and biodiversity. With the world on lockdown, rapid social changes have increased the opportunities to re-think […]