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[The Expansion of Brazilian]
[Ayahuasca Religions:]
[Law, Culture, and Locality]
[Kevin Feeney, J.D.]
[April 21, 2013]
Today I'm going to be looking at the expansion of the Brazilian
ayahuasca religions as a foundation or backdrop for exploring
conflicts between law and culture that are inherent in our
current international legal paradigm. So we'll start with
going over...Thank you.
Let's see. There we go. We'll start with going over the three
foundational international drug conventions that provide this
outline for looking at drug use and movement internationally.
So these are the 3 major ones, and the basic purpose behind these
was to foster international cooperation in combating addiction
and preventing that and controlling movement and traffic,
in some cases, of different substances.
So we'll talk about each of these briefly. The first one is the 1961
Single Convention on Narcotic Drugs, and this primarily
focuses on plants, so we're looking primarily at coca, ***,
and marijuana. Within this, we see the primary purpose again
of combating addiction, and to some extent this convention
allowed traditional use to continue for a period of 25 years.
So under this convention, traditional uses of marijuana
and coca were supposed to have been eliminated by 1986.
There were some medical exemptions, but they're very strictly
regulated, that if a country wanted to grow ***, they had to
record exactly where it was being grown, how many hectares,
all that product would have to be collected in a central location,
distributed through pharmacies, things like that. So a very
biomedical model is being promoted under this convention.
So the 1971 convention I believe was mentioned earlier
this morning, and this is the one that's of primary concern
to ayahuasca. There are no plants actually discussed or prohibited
under this convention, but DMT is prohibited. So there's been
confusion and disagreement about what that means regarding
ayahuasca. Interestingly, there was this other exception that was
allowed, that countries with traditional uses of psychoactive drugs
by particular ethnic groups could make a reservation at the time
of signing on to the treaty. So the important things that we're
looking at is we're really looking at plants that are native
to that territory, and cultures that are specific to
particular countries.
The 1988 convention deals more with trafficking and is important
basically for the introduction of a little bit of new language
that was actually brought to the table by the countries of Peru
and Bolivia, so, this idea of respect for traditional, licit uses.
And of course, by 1988, all traditional uses of coca and marijuana
and *** were supposed to have been eliminated. But of course,
in Bolivia and Peru, these are major parts of the cultural
patrimony and this has been an ongoing issue for some
South American countries about getting recognition for these
practices internationally. So to summarize, we have some very
basic ideas or things that come out of these 3 conventions
that really guide international law. These are, when looking
at psychoactive drug use, they're permissible in regulated,
highly regulated medical contexts, and they're also permissible
if a country has made a reservation, but they could only make
reservations for groups that are highly localized ethnic groups
with historical traditions around use of these substances.
So we're looking at very specific, very limited groups that could
get permission to continue these sort of psychoactive plant traditions.
Okay. So I'm sure at this point it's the last day of the conference,
the third day of the ayahuasca track, so people are probably
familiar with the Brazilian ayahuasca religions if you weren't
already. But these are religions with roots generally in the early
to mid-20th century. Some people would describe them as syncretic.
Others prefer not to use that terminology, but we do see
a bringing in of different types of traditions into these churches
including of course the shamanic use of plants, elements of
Catholicism, Afro-Brazilian spiritism, and other sorts of traditions.
So, before moving on, to point out that these are not actually...
these churches are 19th, or 20th-century, excuse me, manifestations,
so there's questions about the historical-ness of their nature,
and they're also not indigenous practices per se, although those
come into the tradition. So in the last 30 to 40 years, the Santo Daime
and UDV specifically are the two groups that have really
expanded internationally. We really see that starting in late 80s
and early 90s, really this sort of international growth, appearance
in Europe, North America, and other parts of the globe.
So when we're working in this international context, where we
have these sort of historical and geographical limitations
on the use of plants, it's important to understand: what are we
talking about? What was meant when they used this language?
So looking at, say, ayahuasca, for example, we have...some of
the first recorded uses come from the 1850s, so we know it's
at least that old, but there's some debate about exactly
how historic use of ayahuasca is. There are authors and academics
that have claimed that this goes back thousands of years,
and there are other people that have made strong arguments
against this interpretation. So it's a little ambiguous
how historical these are, but we do know that the Brazilian
ayahuasca religions have a very recent origin in the 20th century.
So the question is: is that significantly historical for an exemption
under this international paradigm?
And again, the Native American Church was mentioned in
the last presentation, and we can again use this as a parallel.
The Native American Church actually has its origins in
the 19th century and wasn't really firmly established as a church
until the 20th century, but a lot of the legal and cultural
arguments that have been made in the United States for the preservation
and for the legal rights of the different tribes that participate
in the church was this historical nature of it. We do have
archeological evidence showing ceremonial use that goes back
5,000 years. So even though these traditions are fairly recent,
there was this reliance on history in order to argue a legitimacy
to these practices. So the other issue is this issue of culture
and locality. So there's this clear idea in the conventions that
a cultural practice is okay as long as it stays confined to the
geographic area in which it originated. Of course, history is marked
by immigration and cultural flows and exchanges, and so this idea
of a culture that doesn't move outside of particular arbitrary
political boundaries is really pretty absurd. So there's some
strong questions about these ideas that are being promulgated
and relied upon within these international treaties.
So we have this idea of, just real quickly, this idea of tying culture
to particular geographic regions. A lot of academics will trace this
back to the end of the Thirty Years' War in Europe,
with the Treaties of Westphalia, which is really this idea
of creating solid political boundaries where a political elite
would have control over people and populations within
particular political boundaries. So this leads to ideas of national
integrity and nationalism, things like that, that of course have
led to lots of problems in the modern world.
The other problem that we know is that the world has always been
global. We've always had people from different cultures
interacting and intermingling. You go back to boats or use of horses,
or whatever, and you've got people traveling distances and
interacting with other people. Of course, in the 20th and now
the 21st century, with modern technology, you can fly across
continents in hours. You can communicate by email or Skype or phone
with people across the world. We have books, films, audio recordings
of different cultural events, things like that. So all of these things
become highly tangible and highly accessible in the modern world.
These are all technologies that facilitate cultural exchange.
So this idea of culture being bound by certain geographic
boundaries is really increasingly absurd as we move forward.
This brings us to the idea of transnationalism, and the idea
of transnational is usually discussed in terms of ethnic
communities that have a country of origin but that have transplanted
somewhere else. So we see that a lot in the United States
and other part of the world with Hispanic communities from
various South American countries or Islamic communities,
or other things like that, that have ties to particular countries,
but are living in another country. So this sort of raises questions
of "where do these people belong?" They have 2 potentially
home countries, right? So which territory? Does one of these
territories define that culture? And moving beyond this, we have this
idea of the trans-nation, which was proposed by Arjun Appadurai,
which is that you have these transnational communities
that actually go beyond. It's not just ethnic communities
anymore. We have transnational or transnations, that are based upon
religion, or based upon employment or military service.
So you have groups that are connected in different countries,
but those connections are not necessarily cultural or ethnic,
but they are based on different sorts of ties.
Okay. So one of the things we propose is that the Brazilian
ayahuasca religions are sort of trans-nations. You have all these
congregations that are appearing across the world. But they also...
even though these congregations are multi-ethnic, they retain
these ties to Brazil and to the Amazon, where the ayahuasca
plants, the Banisteriopsis vine and Psychotria and other
admixture plants are found. There are other strong ties that...
one of the the things for a lot of groups, the idea of pilgrimage,
visiting these areas, is something that's important. We also have
ritual preparation, so this idea of perhaps wild-crafted ayahuasca,
something that's picked and harvested in its native community,
and different rites and preparations that go along with that process.
Also Portuguese is a basic, foundational ritual language.
I could go on. There are all sorts of these other sorts of ties that
really tie these international communities back to Brazil,
where these traditions originated. To illustrate this case,
there was a legal case in the Netherlands a few years ago, and
the Netherlands, of course, is one of our more progressive
countries in the world, and the Netherlands actually recognizes
a religious right for groups to use ayahuasca within their country.
But they had a problem with people importing it. There are international
implications and other legal implications that the Netherlands
felt a little uncomfortable with. So a man was arrested,
charged with importation of DMT in the form of ayahuasca.
What this individual, or what this congregation did was they said
that this is actually...this should be a protected religious
practice, because our ayahuasca that we use is ritually prepared,
and it needs to go through this process, and it needs to come
from Brazil. So we need to have this connection. So they won
on that argument, but there's some interesting issues there.
So, certainly, the Netherlands is too high in latitude to probably
grow Banisteriopsis outside in your garden. Potentially it could
be grown in a greenhouse. So there's some question about,
by making this legal argument, while this is how they were
acquiring ayahuasca at the time, they may have created
a situation where they're now locked into importing as their tradition.
So if somebody started growing it on their own, that might
create legal complications for other groups that are importing it,
because the government would say "well, these people have"
"a greenhouse, so why can't you just grow it and stop importing it?"
So there's these interesting... a feedback between the legal systems
and the cultural evolution of some of these groups.
So of course, since these groups come from Brazil, it's important
to look at what's happening in Brazil. As I mentioned earlier,
in the conventions there is a mechanism for countries to make
reservations and protect indigenous practices that include
the use of psychoactive plants. Brazil did not do this when they
signed on to this treaty. So they didn't have reservation,
but they have domestically addressed this issue internally,
so there's lots...so religiously, the religious use of ayahuasca
within Brazil is something that's permitted even though they
didn't make this reservation under the international laws.
One of the issues, though, that remains: there's this ambiguity
about importation/exportation of ayahuasca. So if a group wants to
bring ayahuasca from Brazil, can they do that?
We've got more about that on the next slide. So, Canada, and
I think I've heard a couple people have mentioned this earlier,
but in 2006 Canada...a...Santo Daime congregation in Canada got
tentative permission from the government to import ayahuasca
for their religious ceremonies. The stipulation was that the group
had to get permission from Brazil to take it out of the country, and
unfortunately, Brazil never responded to this request. So this
tentative acceptance languished, for, I guess, about 6 years,
and then finally, last year, the Harper government decided
that they were going to withdraw that permission completely.
So we see a missed opportunity here, potentially, for Brazil
to be perhaps...to collaborate or cooperate to allow international
congregations to participate in practice. We have the similar
issue in Spain, where groups can use legally there, but they can't
bring it into the country. So I'm going to have to speed up here.
So there are some questions about, "what do we do with this?"
So one of the ideas is potentially Brazil could issue export permits
and they could cooperate in this way, or we could look to...
Bolivia as an example. As I mentioned earlier, Bolivia's had
a long-standing issue with the prohibition on coca in these
international conventions, and after years of trying to get
amended language that would recognize traditional uses, they
determined that they would actually have to withdraw completely from
the convention prohibiting coca use. So what they did is they withdrew.
How these treaties are set up is that you make reservations
when you ratify them. So they withdrew and they
made a reservation and then ratified the treaty again. So that's
another example of some way, as we're probably not going to have any
new conventions any time soon, it's a mechanism for potentially
weakening some of these more hard-line positions in these conventions.
I think I'm about out of time, so let's see.
So basically, to conclude, we have these international conventions,
but they have these serious problems at their foundation,
this idea that culture is confined to specific locations, or this idea
that culture is static and doesn't change or evolve over time.
There are very few traditions that we have now that we can say
go back 1,000 years, and there are very fewer ways to be able
to prove that. Culture is always changing. We have wars, we have
disease, we have natural disasters, and culture is what humans
use to adapt to changes in their environment. So this is something
that we really need to look at. Unfortunately I didn't get to
the medicine part, but we'll go on to questions.
[applause]
Thank you, Kevin. If anyone has a question, please, you can
go to the microphone in the middle of the room, and if you can limit
yourself to one question, thank you.
One of the very first, if not the first religions would be the shamanic
practices all over the world. It has been, after all, a source of
medicine, a source of, indeed, the arts, such as
theater, and indeed, a source of religious practice. And I wonder
what, if in law it is possible to recognize a set of religious
practices as diverse as Hinduism, why is not possible to recognize
shamanic practices as a legitimate religion? What is the legal obstacle?
Right. Well that's a great question, and I think these things
vary a lot from country to country. Being from the United States,
I can speak best about the United States, that within the States
we really have...the concept of religion is premised upon this
Judeo-Christian model. I had mentioned the
Native American Church earlier, and one of the ideas behind calling it
the Native American Church, or the reason why they actually
incorporated as a church, was there was some sense that
"well, maybe this is something those white people will understand."
So there's a lot of difficulty in how we talk about these things
and how we define these things, and a lot of preconceived
notions about what it means to be a religion. So I think
those are some of the problems, and I think in these international
conventions we do see...I mentioned we see this pushing of
biomedical models of drug use, and I think we also see these
pushing of these other sorts of Western or northern cultural
manifestations or understandings of culture and religion.
So I don't know if that really answers your question, but it's
an ongoing debate.
- It is just a profound-- - Please, one question.
- So we can hear everyone. Thank you. - It is just a profoundly
striking observation that Hinduism in the way that it has historically
been practiced, and it continues to be practiced, in the Indus Valley,
is an incredibly diverse set of religious practices, of a diversity
comparable with shamanism, that has religious protection--
- I'm sorry, Kevin, we're actually out of time. - and shamanism does not.
Right.
- It is really strange. - Right, definitely.
Could we...quick question. Very quick. Thank you.
I don't know if it was addressed in the previous talk, and I don't
know if you're the right person, but my question is: how does
import/export work for the UDV in the United States?
How does that set up?
Right, so one of the things that's interesting about the United States
is often we don't care that much about international treaties.
[laughter]
And this was one of the issues that actually came up in the UDV case
that Jeffrey Bronfman was just talking about, is one of the arguments
that the US government made was, "look, we signed this international"
"treaty prohibiting this substance and so there's no way"
"we can allow people to use it here." The Supreme Court said,
"We signed a treaty? Who cares?" So it was more, the US is more
interested about our own populations and our own laws.
As Jeffrey pointed out, it was that agreement between the church,
and between the federal government, specifically the DEA,
that allowed that to happen, and of course, premised on
the ideas of religious freedom.
We're going to have to move on, but I encourage anyone--
A quick question on something--
We don't have time for another question; I'm sorry. But please
find Kevin afterwards, and thank you very much, Kevin.
Thank you.
[applause]
The next speaker is going to be Ken Tupper.
His talk is entitled, "The--"
[Presented by The Beckley Foundation]
[Council on Spiritual Practices; Heffter Research Institute]
[Multidisciplinary Association for Psychedelic Studies (MAPS)]
[More videos available at psychedelicscience.org]