![]() SP: There’s a long history of Western scientists, researchers and anthropologists going into Indigenous cultures and finding these plant medicines and then extracting them and taking them back to the United States and other places in ways that have been really awful in some cases. There’s a lot of historical and intergenerational trauma that my lineages have faced. It was like a veil was lifted from my face, and I released so much shame that I felt for just being Indigenous and being Afro-Indigenous, being both Black and Native American. In that experience, I could feel this historical trauma running through my veins. So reading this research and understanding the traditional ways of life, it made sense for me to sit with my friends on the great lawn at my university and try psychedelics for the first time. It was through the American Indian Religious Freedom Act that we even got our right to practice in ceremony and sit with peyote. We can’t tell the true history of psychedelics without acknowledging the plight of Indigenous peoples. Indigenous peoples have been protecting them from time immemorial. Psychedelics didn’t begin with Aldous Huxley and Albert Hofmann and the ’60s. SK: Plant medicines, which Indigenous peoples refer to instead of “psychedelics” as the Western world does, have always been a way of our life that was taken from us because of boarding school and assimilation. SP: Why were psychedelics so important to you personally? That trauma didn’t begin with me, but it can end with me. Really, the motivation to leave my community in Wisconsin and move to New York City to pursue a degree in psychology was to understand how historical trauma and intergenerational trauma has impacted my family and my lineage. SP: When you say you’re a survivor, are you talking personally or about the culture you grew up in? ![]() I’m also a survivor of childhood sexual abuse - and to really be able to heal, psychedelics played a pivotal role. But it wasn’t until college that I was really introduced to psychedelics. SK: Not psychedelics, but we have many different plant medicines that are central to our healing, whether that be tobacco, sweetgrass, cedar or sage. SP: Were plant medicines part of that tradition for you and your family? The mantra there was, “Kill the Indian, save the man.” So ceremony and our ways of life have always been important. ![]() She made sure that I had my early education and day care on the Oneida Reservation where I learned my language and our different ways of life.įor my mom, who was born in the ’70s, it’s really important for her to reclaim her indigeneity, whereas my grandmother was brought up in a Catholic religious household - that was due to her great-grandfather going to Carlisle Indian Boarding School, which was very much assimilated. My mother has always taught me the importance of my culture as medicine and as a way of healing. Sutton King: That story begins very early in my life. Steve Paulson: When did you become interested in plant medicines as a way to heal trauma and addiction and other problems? This transcript has been edited for clarity and length. ![]() King spoke with Steve Paulson for “To the Best of Our Knowledge” as part of the show’s series, Luminous. She’s also calling on science labs to hire Indigenous people as researchers and clinicians, and pharmaceutical companies to recruit Native Americans to serve on their boards. She’s the co-founder and president of the Urban Indigenous Collective, a public health group serving Native Americans in the tri-state area of New York. ![]() Sutton King is an Indigenous rights activist who’s out to transform the culture around psychedelics. ![]()
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