Tending a Vibrant World
History of Pharmacy and Pharmaceuticals – October 01, 2023
Source: OpenAlex
Summary
The commercialization of Indigenous sacred plant medicines, from tobacco to psilocybin, risks severing their deep relationality. Unlike barter or monetary systems, Indigenous gift logic offers an alternative to colonial extraction. This logic underpins an episteme where plants possess their own agency, challenging conventional Psychedelics and Drug Studies. Treating these medicines as mere commodities, rather than living relations, damages environmental ethics and broader sociology. Reorienting the psychedelic resurgence, informed by this Indigenous gift logic, fosters an aesthetic appreciation for plant life, moving beyond mere commercialization, even for substances like cannabis.
Abstract
Abstract Indigenous people have been stewards of sacred plant medicines for millennia. Many of these sacred medicines—such as tobacco, cedar, sage, sweetgrass, and more recently the ayahuasca admixture and psilocybin-containing fungi—have been commercialized via their entry into the global capitalist economy. In this article, we offer readers an introduction to Indigenous gift logic as an alternative to the necropolitics of colonial extraction associated with the contemporary psychedelic resurgence. Unlike barter or monetary-based economic systems, gift economies are based on the notion of gift giving without a tacit agreement for future reward. The logic of the gift goes beyond this accessible definition in that it underpins an episteme of relationality that is difficult (if not impossible) to nurture when our plant and fungal relations are treated as things or commodities, rather than lives with their own habits, dispositions, and agency. We offer suggestions for reorienting the psychedelic resurgence to create space for relational ontologies to flourish, indexed to place, and informed by Indigenous gift logic.