PS2025 Right Relationship Statement
Public Statement to the PS2025 Community
This statement was co-created by the PS2025 Right Relationship committee, the Plant Medicine Track curation committee, and other key allies to acknowledge tensions, harms, and opportunities that emerged at PS2023. We offer this as part of our ongoing commitment to healing, accountability, and building stronger relationships with Indigenous communities.
Psychedelic Science is a forum for education and community that encompasses multiple and differing viewpoints about the complex topic of psychedelics. We hope attendees leave the event more connected, informed, and compassionate than when they arrived. By encouraging an environment of curiosity and dialogue, we seek to cultivate wisdom to inform the road ahead.
Of course, the world of Indigenous cultures is vast, rich, and complex. MAPS is proud to work alongside, learn from, and be in relationship with tribal, Native American/Alaska Native, and Indigenous peoples from across the United States and the world. We honor the spectrum of identity represented by land-based practices and the responsibilities woven into ancestral lineages, and we celebrate efforts to maintain, reclaim, or reconnect to them — while holding space for the complexity that comes with navigating indigeneity and territoriality in a globalized world. At Psychedelic Science, our intention is to responsibly platform people who represent some, but never all, of the perspectives from this tapestry of cultures.
Not every Indigenous culture has a history of the use of visionary plants, and many Indigenous people do not want to publicly discuss this topic, which can be a delicate subject even within their own communities. We are mindful to avoid tokenization, and have done our best to platform a variety of perspectives focused on the relationship of Indigenous people or practices with the larger psychedelic movement, rather than panels that offer one-directional instruction about healing traditions, or intra-community conversations that are not appropriate within the context of a primarily non-Native event.
We stand in solidarity with those seeking an honest reckoning with the injustices of the past and present, and going forward, we will strive to do our part in guiding the psychedelic movement toward ethical collaboration, ongoing consultation, and meaningful participation from and with Indigenous people impacted by legal, social, and cultural reforms.
-We have been in ongoing consultation with a diverse group of Indigenous advisors and allies about other elements of the conference, and MAPS staff and leadership have made intentional efforts to engage with Indigenous communities over the last months and years.
-As in 2023, we have offered hundreds of scholarships to Native or Indigenous attendees, and will platform dozens of Native or Indigenous speakers throughout the agenda.
-We are graced by Indigenous speakers and participants with a variety of positionalities: people authorized by their communities to represent their lineage and traditions, individuals who speak for themselves, youth and elders reclaiming and protecting ancestral practices, and, of course, affiliated and unaffiliated experts who present about non-Native subjects of all kinds.
-We are grateful for the delegation brought by the Indigenous Medicine Conservation Fund that published a declaration expressing some of their concerns following the 2023 conference (also reproduced below) We are proud to host a session at 9:30am on Friday, June 20, during which an updated version of the declaration will be shared on the Keynote stage. Additional information about related programming can be found here.
-Psychedelic Science 2025 is proud to debut The María Sabina Indigenous Lounge (Room 607), stewarded by the Urban Indigenous Collective in partnership with MAPS, completely dedicated to Native and Indigenous-focused conversations.
The PS2025 Code of Conduct encourages respect, open-mindedness, and constructive dialogue, and prohibits discrimination, harassment, and personal attacks. Given the stark power dynamics that create inherently uneven ground in conversations between western governments and institutions and tribal peoples and nations, we know that our efforts are not comprehensive and may fall short. We invite attendees to join us in the courageous act of looking directly at and speaking honestly about these tensions.
We hope our efforts to improve the conference also contribute to a future where Indigenous people are respected for their communities’ contributions and honored for their essential presence in this movement. We wish to demonstrate our sincere intention to improve our behavior, relationships, and understanding. Wherever you fall in this tapestry of identity, experience, and philosophy, we hope that you will have a meaningful experience at Psychedelic Science 2025.
