Arts and Humanities Inaugural Lecture: Paloma Martinez-Cruz
From the stresses of parenthood to the relief of symptoms related to treatment-resistant depression, obsessive compulsive disorder and other mental health disorders, uses for “magic mushrooms” are on the rise around the globe. But psilocybin, the naturally occurring psychedelic compound produced by hundreds of species of fungi, arrives to big pharma only because a U.S. researcher tricked a Mazatec Mexican shaman into offering him her culture’s sacred medicine. What is to be made of this explosion of Indigenous Mexican medicine? How does the violation of Indigenous rights figure into our understanding of its circulation and consumption? Informed by decolonial, feminist Latinx research, Martinez-Cruz interrogates the mushroom marketplace that has long ignored ethical questions around sacred Indigenous property.
