Psychedelic culture is at an inflection point. As psychedelics assimilate into the mainstream Western culture, some longtime participants wonder if psychedelics will help us revolutionize society, or if they will just reinforce old narratives. Women, queer people, people of color, and Indigenous people have long been marginalized in Western psychedelic culture. How can we cultivate a psychedelic renaissance that includes everyone?
Join CIIS faculty and Executive Director of the Chacruna Institute for Psychedelic Plant Medicines Bia Labate and licensed psychotherapist, clinical supervisor, and CIIS faculty Gisele Fernandes-Osterhold for a powerful conversation on the push for justice and inclusion in the greater psychedelic culture.
Bia shares insights from her latest anthology, Psychedelic Justice, a collection of essays from Chacruna Institute for Psychedelic Plant Medicines—a community activist organization, whose mission is to provide public education and cultural understanding about psychedelic plant medicines and promote a bridge between the ceremonial use of sacred plants and psychedelic science. The essays examine historical and current issues within psychedelics, and orient around policy, reciprocity, diversity and inclusion, sex and power, colonialism, and Indigenous concerns.
Drawing from her extensive experience in the psychedelic field and in social justice, Bia shares tools for creating a psychedelic renaissance that represents everyone—honoring voices that have been suppressed for too long and envisioning a more beautiful tomorrow through a psychedelic lens.
Dr. Beatriz Caiuby Labate (Bia Labate) is a queer Brazilian anthropologist based in San Francisco. She has a PhD in social anthropology from the State University of Campinas (UNICAMP), Brazil. Her main areas of interest are the study of plant medicines, drug policy, shamanism, ritual, religion, and social justice. She is Executive Director of the Chacruna Institute for Psychedelic Plant Medicines (http://chacruna.net, https://chacruna-iri.org, https://chacruna-la.org). She serves as Public Education and Culture Specialist at the Multidisciplinary Association for Psychedelic Studies (MAPS), and Adjunct Faculty at the East-West Psychology Program at California Institute of Integral Studies (CIIS). She is also Diversity, Culture, and Ethics Advisor at the Synthesis Institute. Additionally, she is a co-founder of the Interdisciplinary Group for Psychoactive Studies (NEIP) in Brazil and editor of its site. She is author, co-author, and co-editor of twenty-four books, two special-edition journals, and several peer-reviewed articles (https://bialabate.net).
Gisele Fernandes-Osterhold is a licensed psychotherapist, clinical supervisor and graduate level psychology professor. Active in the mental health field for 20 years, she has extensive training and clinical experience in trauma-informed psychotherapy, using an integrative approach that is rooted in Somatic, Humanistic-Existential and Transpersonal psychologies. Being an immigrant to the United States and a woman of color, Gisele has developed a profound interest to multicultural issues, which has become one of the main topics of her work. Gisele’s personal approach to healing is rooted in her commitment to embodied spirituality, informed by her practices of yoga, dance and indigenous traditions of her native Brazil. Besides her psychotherapy practice, Gisele serves as core faculty member in the Integral Counseling Psychology program at CIIS, a mentor at the Center for Psychedelic Therapies and Research at CIIS and a clinical supervisor at the Sage Institute.
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