Ceremony provides a necessary context that sustains change and healing. The New England Journal of Medicine highlighted psilocybin's potential in treating depression but emphasized that positive outcomes do not justify cultural appropriation. Honoring Indigenous rights is essential in this context, as outlined in UNDRIP Article 31, which recognizes the control Indigenous Peoples have over their cultural heritage. A framework of eight principles from an Indigenous consensus guides interactions with Indigenous medicines, reinforcing the need for respect and responsibility in this engagement.
Ceremony is the container: elders, songs, prayers, land, kin, language. Strip the container and outcomes wobble. Honor the container and change grows roots. That's not poetry-that's practice. Context is the medicine.
Article 31 of the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples (UNDRIP) affirms the right of Indigenous Peoples to maintain, control, protect, and develop their cultural heritage and traditional knowledge-including medicines.
Positive results of psilocybin treatment do not authorize appropriating ceremony or rebranding cultural practices as clinical techniques. They call us to honor the contexts that have stewarded this work for generations.
An Indigenous‑led consensus articulates eight principles for any Western engagement with Indigenous medicines: Reverence, Respect, Responsibility, Relevance, Regulation, Reparation, Restoration, and Reconciliation.
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