https://maps.org/news/update/qa-with-benjamin-de-loenen/?utm_medium=email&utm_source=pardot&utm_content=ICEERS&utm_campaign=2024-bauMAPS interview director – Benjamin De Loenen
Benjamin De Loenen is the Executive Director of The International Center for Ethnobotanical Education, Research, and Service (ICEERS), a fiscal sponsee of MAPS dedicated to transforming society’s relationship with Traditional Indigenous Medicines. We spoke with Benjamin to give you more insight into how your support of MAPS helps propel the psychedelic ecosystem as a whole.
Can you give some background on ICEERS? From a high level, what is the end goal you’re working towards?
This year, we are celebrating our 15th anniversary! For 15 years, we have been working around the complex issues of the globalization of indigenous traditional plant medicines. Specifically, we want to assure that this process ends up benefitting all communities involved, in the first place the Indigenous cultures and territories, and the sophisticated knowledge systems these Peoples have safeguarded for many, many generations.
We work from the UN all the way down to the grassroots of people working with plants around the world ceremonially. We know there will always be clashes between worldviews or perspectives, and ICEERS position is at the intersection and the nexus where these worlds come together. We try to weave relationships of trust so that we can all grow and learn from our differences. I said it best in my TedTalk: “It is exactly where our worldviews clash that we have the greatest opportunities for learning.”
Congratulations on 15 years! What are some of the biggest accomplishments that ICEERS has had over those 15 years?
For me, the biggest successes have been weaving relationships and alliances because all our achievements came from the relationships we’ve been building.
One big achievement was the creation of the World Ayahuasca Conference — the world’s largest gathering of the ayahuasca community — because it’s been an engine for movement building and many other initiatives have been born there.
We have the Ayahuasca Defense Fund (not solely limited to ayahuasca), which has played a role in over 300 legal cases worldwide. In many cases, we have helped avoid negative legal precedents and give people back their liberty. We have also achieved some positive legal precedents. This legal defense program is without a doubt changing the lives of many people around the world.
We have published over 100 scientific papers and book chapters, and much of this work has been instrumental in the legal defense and advocacy work.
Since 2013, we have given free support to a few thousand people going through challenging experiences. This crisis and integration support was funded for two years with public money from the European Union, which I think is the future and should be an essential service. Then last year, we published a book of all the lessons learned.
We also have some achievements around cannabis where we have worked with governments, like in Malta, Germany and Zurich (Switzerland) recently and Uruguay back in the day. We have been pushing policies that put people, individuals, and communities at the center.
Can you talk more about the policy work you do?
We advocate for policies that are very different from the corporate approaches to cannabis you see a lot in the US or Canada. We take a community-first approach and focus on the right to cultivate and for people to associate in what is called Cannabis Social Clubs, a nonprofit user association model that was pioneered in Spain and now also exists for ceremonial plant medicine practices.
We have collaborated on several UN processes. For example, one was a guide for governments on how to implement drug policy in a way that respects human rights. We contributed perspectives on the rights to health, religious freedom, and indigenous rights around psychedelics and plant medicines. Those concepts around traditional plant medicine and psychedelics made their way into that document, which is a recommendation to governments around the world.
That process is one example, but we are part of drug policy networks such as the International Drug Policy Consortium, we have collaborated on events sponsored by governments at the UN and bring our perspectives into relevant processes internationally. ICEERS monitors and seeks opportunities for connecting the dots globally.
Are there any accomplishments you’re really proud of that have happened more recently, like within the last 12 months?
We worked with a senator in Mexico who wanted to implement a policy around psilocybin. Our team worked with her for two years to turn her idea into a bill that protects Indigenous knowledge and tradition in the first place, and sets clear boundaries around what corporations can do.
At some point we learned that the consulting she did with Mazatec communities left part of that community felt they weren’t included enough in the process. So we ended up working with the senator to develop another Bill which basically says that in Mexico, anything that affects or impacts indigenous peoples has to pass through a prior free and informed consent process according to indigenous cultural standards.
We don’t know if they will pass, but if it does, it will be the first time in Mexico that prior and informed consent will be fully acknowledged and implemented. That process has been definitely a big learning success. We’re going to see soon whether it’s approved or not.
Some of the things you’ve touched on here are that we truly are a global and collective movement and that accomplishments cannot be pinned down to a single person or organization. Everyone is a piece of this puzzle.
How do you see the collaboration continuing to evolve between organizations and companies, between different countries, and between individuals with different cultures?
The donor community is very heavily focused on drug development. At this moment, there’s this feeling of ‘we’re almost at the finish line… let’s push because we’re almost there.’
If we really want to get to this revolution of health, it lies in the revolution of relationships between all of these diverse knowledge systems and worldviews. We need to get to the roots of these differences and truly co-create initiatives.
Putting LSD or MDMA in a psychiatric context of mental health makes sense. But if we do that with plants that come from very sophisticated systems that understand health from a completely different perspective, we might be losing what it’s all about, which is the knowledge systems and not the substances, and even negatively impacting the Indigenous Peoples who’s way of life depends upon these sacred plants..
It sounds counterintuitive, but we may need to move slower. The world is in crisis, but if we really want systemic change, there’s a deeper, slower process that needs to happen that is all about alliance building and learning from our differences and exploring the blindspots and underlying assumptions of the psychedelic renaissance..
I want to shift and talk more about the relationship between MAPS and ICEERS. How long have you been a fiscal sponsee of MAPS?
We’ve been a fiscal sponsee since 2014, but our relationship with MAPS goes back even before the founding of ICEERS.
I’ve been involved in this field for 20 years, and it started with a documentary I made about ibogaine. I finished the documentary in 2004, but in 2003 I needed funding to finish the film. Rick gave me space in the MAPS Bulletin to write an article about it. After that article was published, the funding came to finish the film. That’s really where our relationship started.
Rick has been very generous with helping me connect to potential funders and giving visibility to our work, and I am extremely grateful for everything he and MAPS have done.
What has the relationship that you’ve had with MAPS meant to you? How has being a fiscal sponsee allowed ICEERS to better function as an organization or achieve more results in the world than if you hadn’t had this relationship with us?
In Europe, the regulation around nonprofits is not unified. Being a fiscal sponsee has opened the door for US donors where they can reap the tax benefits that exist in the US. The nonprofit world in the US is very active, and connecting to that space has been key to being able to manage and grow ICEERS.
Is there anything you wish to share with our audience that we haven’t covered?
Research is frequently seen as an important element to push this whole field in the right direction. There’s a lot of talk about evidence-based policies, but what is considered evidence is usually biomedical or academic research. Other systems that generate knowledge in different ways are generally not considered.
What about more ceremonial cultural practices that have been around for many years, even before the medicalization of psychedelics? How can that also be recognized and coexist?
We are moving quickly and with a lot of enthusiasm towards the medicalization approach. I think it’s important to see the full context so there’s no harm generated to other communities, and that the full implications of our actions are understood.
I invite funders to consider that despite things moving fast in the drug development sphere, the other work should not be forgotten.
This interview was conducted by Zane Bader, Communications Officer.
