A growing new industry around psychedelic therapy is quickly utilizing biopiracy tactics to steal indigenous knowledge of new drugs.
Psychedelics being the new gold rush for a lot of these corporations is limiting access for those who need it most: for communities of color, for Indigenous people, for BIPOC communities, and making it financially inaccessible.And Indigenous groups are concerned that putting a price tag on these drugs will actually end up hurting the communities for whom these drugs hold special significance.
“Psychedelics being the new gold rush for a lot of these corporations is limiting access for those who need it most: for communities of color, for Indigenous people, for BIPOC communities, and making it financially inaccessible,” Robbins said. “It’s the new, hot, shiny toy that everybody wants to jump onto, and try to figure out how to make money off of it.”
Andrew Judge , an Anishanabe assistant professor at Algoma University in Canada who specializes in ethno-medicine and land-based learning , agreed. “What you might have is somebody who experiences the power of these medicines and then just uses that to pursue or further their colonial exploits,” he told The Daily Beast, adding that the process of turning these compounds into medicine removes it from the connection and responsibility to the land where it grows.
This is part of the cycle of biopiracy that Judge described as a “violent colonial process”. Indigenous plants are criminalized, patented, sold without any Indigenous context, and then decades later legalized. According to Judge, about 10 years ago he heard from an Anishinaabe elder on Wikwemikong Manitoulin Island who shared the knowledge of certain plant medicine that treats headaches but only grows in that one area. That medicine was then taken by industry scientists—who then proceeded to patent and monetize it. “These kinds of stories are quite common,” he said. “A lot ofmakes up the basis of the current pharmacopeia used in modern medicine.
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