Full Transcript:

Emily Race 0:13

Hello and welcome to the Founding Mothers Podcast where we're imagining new ways of living with one another in our planet. I'm your host Emily Race. Today we will be speaking with Lorena Nascimento. Lorena is an educator working with environmental justice, urban forestry, community engagement and data empowerment. Originally from Brazil, Lorena moved to Portland, Oregon to pursue a Ph.D. in Urban Studies.

Lorena Nascimento 0:38

It's important that the government take accountability for that, to invest in that. When you educate people about harm reduction, you can save money later in public health. And you can use money for public health to prevent accidental overdose, or people panicking and going to the emergency room, freaking out. Harm reduction is education about drugs, because the War on Drugs, it's been proven, it doesn't work.

Emily Race 1:06

In her dissertation, she described the Western criminalization, acculturation, and cultural appropriation of Black and Indigenous values regarding cultural ecosystem services. Cultural ecosystem services include knowledge systems, spirituality, and recreation, such as the values promoted by entheogen substances. These values have been perpetuated in Black and Indigenous ancestrality, but law enforcement and drug war criminalized traditional rituals in communities of color. Lorena’s interests in the drug policy field include safe entheogen accessibility and equity on the regulation of psychedelics to rescue ancestral values in communities of color. As a geospatial data analyst, she is looking for opportunities that include education, research, and support of new narratives for entheogen accessibility.

Well, welcome Lorena, I'm so grateful to have you on the podcast today. Thank you for being with us.

Lorena Nascimento 2:02

Thank you, and thanks for having me.

Emily Race 2:04

Can we start by you sharing a bit about yourself and also the People of Color Psychedelic Collective?

Lorena Nascimento 2:11

Sure. I'm Lorena Nascimento. I'm getting my doctorate in Urban Studies. JS structure. I'm Brazilian; I'm actually in Brazil now, but I live in the United States in Portland, for seven years. In Portland, I connected with the Brazilian community so I can communicate, organize in a formal way, organize some events and gather the communities together, to get a sense of community, especially for immigrants.

I'm happy to be here, I'm passionate about podcasts. And I like to be productive; I like to express my creativity, try new things. That's kind of how I connected with People of Color Psychedelic Collective in 2020. This was actually during the COVID, the quarantine, I connected a little before we started the lockdown and was able to connect with the nonprofit more during the quarantine time and it was good.

Immigrant life, I’m far from home and I don't have family in United States; so I feel like I need to be responsible, accountable. Drugs, psychedelics helped me with that, especially cannabis and mushroom. With the People of Color Psychedelic Collective, I found a community, even though initially it was all remote, but it was great to be able to share my narrative, to find a safe space and to be in a community.

The People of Color Psychedelic Collective is educational and community-building organization. We organize webinars, and I participate in a couple of them, either organizing or speaking. During the COVID, I talked in the Psychedelic Healing for People of Color, sharing my experience as a panelist. Also building capacities, organization, and being able to educate and to help other people to navigate through harm reduction, to tell the narratives in psychedelics, especially for people of color.

We also work with other community partners. It's been great to be part of this organization, especially to share, to educate people and to allow people to share their narrative.

Emily Race 4:56

It sounds like for your own story in particular, the community was a huge aspect. I know that that is one of the branches that the People of Color Psychedelic Collective work on. Can you share a bit more about the origin story and kind of how this collective came to be?

Lorena Nascimento 5:13

Yes, sure. I joined a little later after they started. It started as a casual online meetup, like Zoom meetings. The first one was organized by Vincent Rado and Dwayne David. And then Ifetayo Harvey took the responsibility of organizing, keeping the meetings going on, until up to 2020 when I joined the organization. In 2008, we partnered with the DC psychedelic society and Philly Psychedelic Society in a panel discussion called “Dismantling Psychedelic Patriarchy.” In 2018, we also partner with the Cosmos Ancestrales Visionales to organize a fundraiser for Maria Sabina and raise $10,000.

There were a couple webinars that we did in the past few years. The “Psychedelic Healing for People of Color” was the one where I shared my experience as a panelist and it was good. We had a group of people coming from different perspectives, different identities, and we are using different types of psychedelics, and each one was sharing their stories; how we got into use of psychedelics, for mental health, to connect with ancestrality.

There's also a webinar about cultural appropriation and psychedelics. This was one webinar that helped me with my dissertation. I was able to connect more the use of ecosystem services, especially plant medicine and intelligence, and how Western society has a cultural appropriation with psychedelics. “Drug use during COVID-19”, another webinar, we talk about harm reduction, which is an important conversation. “Psychedelics and Grief”, especially with people of color being targeted from police brutality; we also talk about the use of psychedelics to support mental health. These are all available on YouTube. “Where Psilocybin, Mescaline and Cannabis Meet: an exchange about Mexican and American culture”, and “After War”, which was an event that happened last month in New York, a music, art and drug policy discussion. There are other type of events that People of Color Psychadelic Collective organized.

Emily Race 8:20

Amazing. There's a lot of education, I'm hearing in this, and, again, that community aspect to share stories.

I'm sure that there are listeners here who either have experienced psychedelics and some who may not be as familiar, so I'm curious, if you could define the range of psychedelics that you all talk about, or are working with as medicine?

Lorena Nascimento 8:47

Yes. Is an interesting question, especially now psychedelics are so hype. It can even sometimes generate some discrimination, like what type of psychedelic some like could be “cool” psychedelics, or they could be “not cool” drugs. Historically, people that might have used hard drugs created space and greater readiness for the psychedelic scene that we have today.

It's one of the goals of the institution, is talking about harm reduction, no matter what drugs we're talking about. There are psychedelics like mushrooms, acid, or hard drugs, like cocaine or heroin; especially for people of color — from my perspective — sometimes, we live in a world that is not designed for us, with structural racism and all the challenges that people of color have to deal with on their daily life. So, drugs, at least for me, can help to dissociate a little bit. And then we can imagine a new world. Some days, we need to go on with our routine. And each body works in a different way. I was talking to my family, they're getting more into drug policies, and they were asking me “Oh, is this drug, cannabis, is it good for me? How old is is good? What is the the age range?”

There is no like recipe, each body is different, each culture is different; you can take drugs for different use; you can take drugs to connect to your ancestrality, for spiritual use, maybe you want to take to dissociate, to go through some trauma, for recreation, with friends. And it can work differently in different bodies.

As an institution, one of our goals is to educate, to protect people of color, to allow events, to promote events, that people can share their experiences, and they can help people that are getting to psychedelics that maybe cannot find identity in other organizations of psychedelics. We don't discriminate. We are here to provide help for whoever needs it for drugs or psychedelics, however people want to call it.

There are big discussions about vocabulary for psychedelic, but we don't discriminate, and we just want to empower people that have been using psychedelics drugs, and to normalize the use, and with responsibility, think about harm reduction; if you're micro dosing, micro or macro dosing, to educate and to create space for that.

Emily Race 12:28

Something that's really jumping out to me, there's a couple of things; one, the appropriation that you're speaking about, and also reducing the harm. Can you describe what is not working, culturally or in society around these drugs and psychedelics that we're talking about?

Lorena Nascimento 12:50

In the United States, especially like in Portland, where I live, there is more open conversation. The last measure in the elections in Oregon decriminalized all drugs, it started conversation, so you're not going to blame the person who is using drugs. Following up to that, it's good to have testing centers, especially “street drugs”. With cannabis legalization, you can see how much THC, how much CBD, what type of weed you're buying, when it's legal. That is one example of harm reduction so people can know what they're buying.

If you want to use cannabis to sleep, you're going to search for one indica strain. If you want to use cannabis to go for a high, maybe you want to use a sativa strain. With the legalization, there is a way to have harm reduction. If someone has a lung problem or they don't want to smoke, they want to eat; that's one type of harm reduction. You can have testing centers, distribution of Narcon to avoid overdose. Creating space where people can talk about about drugs; that's one example of harm reduction.

I remember Clubhouse, when there was a hype, there was one influencer in Brazil that had one room where she would discuss harm reduction and drug policy review in Brazil. I remember, there was one Carnival — there was a big party like Mardi Gras in Brazil — and there was one Instagram post people were sharing on WhatsApp that showed the combination of drugs. If you're taking acid, make sure to drink water, don't mix this drug with that drug.

In most of those initiatives, like in Brazil for harm reduction, they're mostly grassroot organization. There's not much, from what I know so far, incentives from the government. But it is important that the government take some accountability for that, because when we educate people about harm reduction, you can save money later in public health. And you can use money for public health to prevent accidental overdose or people panicking and going to the emergency room freaking out.

So, harm reduction is education about drugs; because the War on Drugs, it's been proven, it doesn't work. If people want to take drugs, they will take drugs. If they know what are the consequences, if have access to materials, there is a way to help with harm reduction.

The other thing about cultural appropriation, it's very present especially with plant medicines from South America, from Latin America. One example of that is the use of mushrooms and psilocybin with knowledge from Maria Sabina and that shared ancestral practice. Now, for example, in Oregon, psilocybin has been approved for therapy, but it's still fighting to have that accessible for spirituality.

Originally, people learned that there was a way to connect with ancestrality, to enhance spirituality. Now that it’s getting legal, people cannot have access to spiritual use, or need to use one dosage that the doctors recommend. One knowledge that was rooted in indigenous communities, once it came to the Western Society, it kind of lost its roots. That is one example of cultural appropriation in psychedelics.

I can talk also about Jurema Sagrada, which is one other type of psychedelic that I'm also doing research on. It's one plant that has entheogen and psychedelic use. In Brazil, similar to the mushrooms and to Maria Sabina, we have Jurema Sagrada, and other plants as well such as Ayahuasca, but Jurema is one that I'm studying now with one Brazilian friend, too, and want to get more connected to that.

The use of the plant also connects with the spirituality and ancestrality. It is most commonly used in the north of Brazil and it connects the indigenous traditions of the north and most of the indigenous communities or what remains in the protected lands on the north of Brazil. And also with the black ancestrality. So in Brazil, there is some African-base religions, Afro-indigenous religions, such as candomblé, Umbanda, and one of them is Jurema. It's similar to mushrooms, similar to cannabis, similar to Ayahuasca; it’s one plant that can be used for healing properties, to calm down, to cure — through the bark; you can use different parts of the plants. It can be used even for reforestation; it’s a plant that grows fast. It also has this psychedelic power that helps in spiritual ceremonies, where people can connect with their ancestral guides from Africa and from indigenous.

Jurema, similar to Umbanda, which is one Brazilian religion that mixes African values and indigenous values. So, similar to Umbanda, one religion that is very Brazilian. Studying about Jurema is helping me to connect with my ancestrality.

And that's one thing about the cultural appropriation; because as we mentioned, people can take psychedelics for different reasons, and one of the reasons I like to take is to connect with ancestrality. So sharing that, the same way it’s helping me it can help other people to connect. But you also need to keep in mind to praise the roots, and to honor the community; especially a lot of times, communities that have been providing psychedelics can be a target of police operation, of drug war operations, or they might be living in conditions, not having access to food, or to basic sanitation. So donating, supporting, sharing, allowing space for people to share the narratives and empower those communities.

Emily Race 22:50

Something that comes up for me, and maybe you can speak to this more, is the understanding that everything is a relationship and that these plants are living beings that we're working with, and then also to understand their own ancestrality and the origins of how these different medicines were used, historically.

It sounds like each person is going to work with different drugs, medicine, in different ways that are distinct for their needs, and also their body and how they're going to respond. Do you have any examples or stories you can share of the things that you've learned or discovered by working with different psychedelic?

Lorena Nascimento 23:38

Coming from Brazil, I always was curious about cannabis. But I was afraid of being a target, of being arrested by police, and my family, they always say, “you're black, you're a woman, you are a target.” Going to the United States, especially to Portland, I was able to have more access to that. Being an immigrant, it was one of the things that helped me with my mental health, to help me to keep going on. But in a certain way, I feel like, “okay, it's not working, I need to be more productive.”

Sometimes, one psychedelic can work for you, and then later the use might not address your needs. There was a time, during my dissertation, I had a hard time to complete one paper. I knew what was on my mind, but I couldn't put that into paper and I want it to be something unique. I also started my work with People of Color Psychedelic Collective to talk more more about drug policy. I wanted to talk more about cultural appropriation, especially through environmental justice, but I couldn't put that into paper. So one weekend, I took mushrooms with my Brazilian friends. It was my first time, so it was a microdose. But then a week later, I wrote the paper, the one about cultural ecosystem services and talking about like the criminalization, acculturation, cultural appropriation of cultural ecosystem services.

There's also supporting ecosystem services, supporting the creation of ecosystems, such as nutrient cycling, creating of soils; provisioning services such as food, timber and fibers, things that we get from the nature's; regulating services, such as climate regulations, water purification, things that keep the ecosystem existing; and cultural ecosystem services, such as recreation, spirituality, knowledge systems, aesthetics, cultural values from nature. But the problem is a lot of the times the legislation, — “How can we use a space for recreation? How can we learn from the plants? How can we access the spirituality?”— A lot of those regulations, they are part of the environmental legislations, but most of the times, especially in the Western society, they are created not including the narratives of people of color.

Thinking about how people have been prosecuted for using plant medicine, for using entheogens, and how, even if at some point it’s been legal, how cultural appropriation or acculturation where you eliminate the ancestral values of those plants.

So, the mushroom trip helped me to organize my thoughts. During the day, it was fun, was I had a good time with my friends, I laughed a lot, it was fun. I was tripping, “it's like melting now.” But for me, mushrooms, I like to take every two, three months, because it helps me to ground into and organize my ideas. For me, it's good to take with intention.

On the first time, I don't think I have a clear intention, but my body, my mind, needed to — “Okay, you need to put down your ideas, you need to organize yourself, to finish this chapter” and I think it came with the intention even with my subconscious maybe.

But it really helps me to to make decisions. A couple months ago, I was very stressed and it helped me to calm down, to be more kind to people, and to be like “How am I talking? What is the message that I'm saying?” It helps me to ground into and reveal some values for me.

I'm more concerned about what's going to happen after the trip and how it's gonna help me to align life or to reveal values then during. During you feel some euphoric, but for me, it's more the post trip that is worth it for me, especially using with intention.

Emily Race 29:53

Some key things I personally would like to highlight: intention being one, even if it's subconscious, how powerful that can be.

I'm thinking about what you were talking about with the war on drugs, if we don't have education or understanding on how we could use these substances or these plants with intention, then we're really missing out on the magic that they're providing, and it can create harm.

The other thing that you're highlighting is, I would use the word “integration”, is that what you would refer to it as?

Lorena Nascimento 30:23

Yes, yes, for sure. That's the thing; when you’re in a community that you feel safe in, that has similar values, where you can have necessary resources or people that have similar background and might be sharing similar experiences, you can prepare. And, don't freak out and use with intention, and think about how they can help you with life; that is one narrative to fight the War on Drugs. Because if you can show a way I can be productive, I can have responsible use, I can use with intention, that is, okay.

The book “Drug Use for Grown Ups” from Carl Hart, which is talking exactly about that. How the harm reduction, how the education, how we can take drugs for recreation; having an open conversation, being more liberal and talking about the benefits of psychedelics on people's mind.

Emily Race 32:25

I would like to also highlight earlier, you were talking about how, for people of color, the world is not necessarily built to support, or is not created with you in mind. When working with certain plant medicines, or psychedelics, it allows space to imagine and to dream, what the world could look like. That's really the intention of this podcast, is to start to imagine what could be possible. What is your vision for the world? What do you see as possible? How would you like things to look?

Lorena Nascimento 33:01

Yeah, that's a cool question. There is one, there's one theory, from Carolyn Finney, about frameworks of reimagination. We can reimagine what will be possible. And a lot of this reimagination is to rescue ancestral values, things that maybe were possible, that was existing before, but with colonization, with oppression, with cultural appropriation, those values were lost.

For me, I been very connected my ancestrality lately, especially through religion, through studying Umbanda, one Afro-Brazilian religion, and also connecting with afro-futurism. Because you will rescue values for the way you think about society, the way people connect with other family values.

Me, am I have like a black identity. Sometimes I can live in a bubble, in my own narratives. So I go to work, I still live in a regular world, but I try to have one narrative that doesn't need to exactly match the society needs, because what I believe might be feeding my reality. And especially in the psychedelic community, you can find people that are thinking in the same way as you. So I think it's important to have this diversity grow in the psychedelic world, so people can create space to have discussions, to do psychedelics together, and to reimagine how the future can be.

So for me, this reimagination of what a world can be is important, and the psychedelics, with the power of dissociation, and later integrating, it's a process to keep evolving, and to be able to think about new ideas.

For example, I was talking before about the cultural ecosystem services; think about the knowledge systems, what we can learn about psychedelics, about plant medicine, how they can heal us, how they can help with our mental health or physical health. If we only listened to doctors, and to research that is being guided by medicine science, we might just believe in one narrative.

But if you also consider the voice of indigenous, the knowledge of Maria Sabina, the knowledge of Jurema's in the north of Brazil, that can expand; and that it is possible if you try, if you talk, if you think out of the box, to expand the mind. And I believe psychedelics help with that.

Emily Race 37:12

As you're sharing that, it's so beautiful, I had this image of, two things; one, it's almost how the past and our ancestors are creating the future, going back to what worked before and bringing that into the future. Then also, this beautiful image of circles of people reimagining the world — particularly people of color as their voices have been missing in how we're shaping the world previously — and working with plants, with different medicines and psychedelics to support with that. It's pretty powerful to imagine that being the norm.

Is there any other vision that you have personally for the world?

Lorena Nascimento 38:08

Yes. I also work with data. We did a project, the People of Color Psychedelic Collective and the Portland Community College, a data storytelling project using story maps; interactive digital maps that use photos, videos, and audio, to tell a story. So, telling a story with a map, or using maps to support the narrative in the story.

Data today is very important. Sometimes we have no idea how important it is; we are all producing data — producing here audio for podcast, we have our IPs — everything is data, and there's a lot of data available that is maybe not totally accessible for people that are not data analysts or data scientists.

One of my goals, that’s also aligned with the People of Color Psychedelic Collective, is to use data — drug data, FBI drug data— to share the history of arrests in the United States, comparing people of color arrests and the total population of one state arrest. This project,
”Punishment in Place”, the students of Portland Community College looked into the quantitative FBI data, looking to the number of arrests from 2009 and 2019; comparing change in states that had legalized cannabis for recreational and seeing how just legalizing cannabis reduced the number of arrests. Also comparing what is the percentage of arrests, based on the demographics of a state; the percentage of people of color, and the percentage of people of color arrests for marijuana.

Especially in states that have not legalized cannabis, there is still a high number of people being arrested for marijuana. In one country, you can see the diversity of drug policy legislation.

In Florida, there's 90.2% of people of color, but the marijuana arrests in Florida are 51.4% of people of color.

In Louisiana, there's 34.7 people of color, and there are 61.1% of marijuana arrests of people of color. That was data from 2019.

With this project, we are creating the data visualization, we are doing interviews with our community leaders to show the qualitative part and to talk about all the psychedelics.

If we're looking to the FBI website for drug arrests, we have by Cannabis or hard drugs, but we don't have one for psychedelics. There's not even one classification; it’s not easy to see the quantitative data. So talking to community leaders that have been facilitating conversations about psychedelics is a way to also tell that story.

So that is one project that is coming from the People of Color Psychedelic Collection. Stay tuned on our website to learn more about this, the quantitative part with FBI drug data and the quantitative part with the interviews and creating one narrative through a story map so people can translate that data.

Data storytelling, data accessibility, is important and very necessary in the psychedelic community, and can help with the harm reduction.

Emily Race 43:48

Absolutely. Thank you for doing that work, because data, I can see so clearly as you're sharing all this, it creates power. It creates ability to make different choices and to understand what's not working.

On that note, what could we expect from People of Color Psychedelic Collective? Are there any other ways people can connect with you, work with you, partner with you?

Lorena Nascimento 44:15

Yes, watch the last webinar we did: "Drugs, Alcohol, and Culture: Where Psilosybin and Cannabis Meet." It's available on YouTube.

Follow us on social media. We're on Instagram, Twitter, Facebook, and YouTube.

Reach out with ideas. We partner with community college in Portland. We also partner with other organizations; our webinars have panelists from the organization and also external partners as well. Reach out with ideas.

And also donate. That is one way to support our work. We provide our time, but some stuff costs money; we need to resource promo videos when we organize one event, host the event. All that costs money. So donate, so we can keep educating society.

Emily Race 45:23

Absolutely. Before we sign off, is there an invitation you have for listeners, something they can take an action on or look at differently in their own lives?

Lorena Nascimento 45:36

Yeah, so that was me, Lorena, talking about some work I did with the People of Color Psychedelic Collective, but also, we have other members. On our advisory board, Ifetayo is the founder of the People of Color, Psychedelic Collective, Yolanda, Mary, Daniel, Tom; listen to their narratives, also. This is only my narrative, but we are a diverse group. So follow them as well.

Emily Race 46:09

Absolutely.

Thank you, again, for being with us, and sharing a little bit of your own stories, and also the work that you're doing with this collective; it feels so important; especially considering the war on drugs, the way that the ways in which society is not working for people of color, and how it can work differently, and this community aspect that feels so needed now more than ever. I appreciate you.

Anything else you'd like to share before we sign off?

Lorena Nascimento 46:45

No, thank you so much for the space, Emily. Find out the information though pocpc.org. So there's our page, many educational material, past webinars and future events coming up and that is a way to reach out to us and know more about the members.

Emily Race 47:08

Wonderful. Thank you so much. Well, enjoy your time in Brazil and hope to talk to you soon.

Lorena Nascimento 47:15

All right, cool. Thank you for that.

Emily Race 47:19

Thank you for listening to this episode of The Founding Mothers Podcast. This podcast is produced and hosted by me Emily Race and edited by Eric Weisberg. If you want to support the show, please leave us a rating or share this episode with the important people in your life. We'd also love to hear from you if you or someone you know would be a great guest to share about their vision for the world. You can email emily@founding-mothers.com or visit www.founding-mothers.com/podcast