Gathering and reading scholarships for this topic took time and great attention to detail. Articles surrounding Ayahuasca tended to focus on either the criminalization of hallucinogens as whole or the healing qualities of the drink. To find scholarship about Ayahuasca tourism specifically meant looking at how tourism in Peru relies heavily on its Indigenous population and culture.
Through researching Ayahuasca tourism it became clear that colonization played a larger role than previously thought. Although more than half of the scholarship used for this website does not consider or mention colonization, through reading Dina Gilio-Whitaker’s book As Long As Grass Grows environmental justice and its intersection with Indigenous activism became clear. This caused a more critical analysis of how colonization affected the Ayahuasca ceremony as well as how it’s currently causing an influx of tourism in Peru.
A closer look into the colonization of tourism in Peru did not feel sufficient enough to cover the environmental injustices taking place within Ayahuasca tourism. A deeper dive into how exactly the ceremony is shifting and being appropriated led to the revelation that environments do not have to be physical. This then led to researching how tourists and foreigners, mostly from the Global North, are co-opting the spiritual experience and shifting the entire meaning of the ceremony.
Finding scholarship specifically on the shift in meaning was difficult, but three articles really helped in grasping what was happening. The Colonization of the Ayahuasca Experience by Mark Hay, Traditional Healing Practices Involving Psychoactive Plants and the Global Mental Health Agenda by José Carlos Bousco and Constanza Sánchez-Avilés, and Forbidden Therapies by Marc G. Blainey helped to better understand the difference between Indigenous and Western uses for Ayahuasca.
Mark Hay wrote a thorough article on how colonization is impacting Ayahuasca ceremonies. He explains how spirituality is intertwined with the hallucinations Indigenous Peoples experience when they drink the brew. The way that cultural beliefs shape the Ayahuasca experience was made clear and helped to shape the way Indigenous and local communities have shaped the ceremony for thousands of years.
José Carlos Bousco and Constanza Sánchez-Avilés offer a description of how Ayahuasca is used within Indigenous cultures, but then offers a look into how global health officials and organizations view it. Although this article is talking about psychoactive plants as a whole, it offers insight into how outsiders view the healing properties of plants such as psychotria viridis. This article couples well with the content of Forbidden Therapies by Marc G. Blainey. They both discuss the role Ayahuasca could play in mental health healing and how with the increase in foreign awareness about Ayahuasca, the spiritual meaning of the ceremony is no longer the focus point.
These articles were crucial parts of the research conducted for this website. They offered information and point of views that allowed for a deeper understanding of the shift in meaning for the Ayahuasca ceremony. Through reading these articles it became clear that colonization is still being felt by the Indigenous communities in Peru. The effects of first contact between Europeans and Indigneous Peoples was not the end of colonization, it is still perpetuated through the co-opting of traditional ceremonies for tourism purposes.