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 disconnect from the communal and spiritual practices integral to Indigenous knowledge, a gap that also contributes to our current environmental and health crises. Here we look at the Yawanawá tradition to critique the reduction of ayahuasca to mere scientific data, advocating for a synthesis of Indigenous and modern scientific approaches to enrich future research and therapeutic practices.
