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Kufikiri Imara
Kufikiri Imara was born and raised on Huichin territory of the Ohlone people (Oakland, California). He grew up in a version of “The Town” very different from the one we see today. It was a place with a broader and more embodied sense of community. He grew up in a family and community environment that strongly emphasized social awareness and responsibility. His personal healing/spiritual journey led him to such moments as volunteering with the Green Earth Poets Society in NYC, bringing poetry to incarcerated African-American youth. He is one of the early members of the Entheogen Integration Circle, a support group in NYC with a focus on marginalized communities within the psychedelic community.
A friend of Sacred Garden Community (SGC), he continually works to deepen his craft as a facilitator focused on socially and culturally diverse communities. He was a member of the SGC team of facilitators, who partnered with the former OLP, in Jamaica, who offered instruction for the first of its kind above ground training for therapists engaging in psychedelic assisted therapy. A former member of the Decriminalize Nature Oakland (DNO) grassroots collective that worked to pass the landmark resolution, he then went on to head the DNO committee on Outreach, Education, Access, & Integration.
He continually works to create broader access to education and the opportunities to profoundly change one’s life for the better. He does so in part by lending his voice to advocacy for marginalized communities within the psychedelic community, for them to have greater access and self agency in their quest for individual, communal, and ancestral healing. Lending his voice as a featured speaker in the Horizons Media documentary film Covid-19, Black Lives, & Psychedelics he highlighted the hypocritical issues that exist within the psychedelic community around these lasting pressing concerns. Paying special attention to Oakland’s and the Bay Areas ethnically diverse and marginalized communities, he is actively working with individuals and organizations doing the work in their communities for a better tomorrow.
With efforts like facilitating a BIPOC Entheogen Integration Circle with the San Francisco Psychedelic Society (SFPS), he continues to work towards accessible choices for ethnically and socially diverse communities in their ability to heal themselves. Kufikiri Imara is known locally, nationally, and internationally as a thoughtfully engaged voice around the important issues of access, education, and inclusion as it relates to marginalized communities within the various ecosystems of the larger entheogenic emergent moment.
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Ayize Jama-Everett
M.Div, MA, MFA
Ayize Jama-Everett (b. NYC 1974) has been in various relationships with plants, substances, and communities since his birth. Born into the Black Power movement's conflicts, Ayize comes from the lineage of the Lincoln Detox project, a community organization in Harlem, New York, that taught the formerly incarcerated to use acupuncture to help with heroin withdrawal. He was brought to the Dine and the Zuni to experience sweat ceremonies and sacred plant blessings. At sixteen, he traveled to Morocco and was taken in by the Gnawa and was privileged to join their rituals.
Ayize served as the director of Outpatient services for Thunder Road Adolescent Treatment center for three years before joining Catholic Charities of Treasure Island as the substance use and mental health services manager. He's worked in both abstinence and harm reduction modalities. He also served as a high school therapist for over a decade.
Ayize Graduated from the Graduate Theological Union in 2001 with a Master's of Divinity. His thesis was on the spiritual use of substances among the homeless youth of Morocco, London, and the Bay Area. Soon after, he began teaching the Course "The Sacred and the Substance," one of the first survey courses of sacred plant use at the Graduate Theological Union. The thesis advisor was the late Ibrahim Farajaje-jones, who also served as his mentor. He's received training from the Zen Hospice center of San Francisco, harm reduction training from the Harm Reduction Coalition of Oakland. He has helped design the facilitation training with the Sacred Garden Community of Oakland.
In 2003, Ayize received a Masters degree in Clinical psychology from New College of California. Soon after, he began doing individual work using sacred plants to help facilitate therapeutic journeys for various people. In 2019, he received a Masters in Fine Arts, Creative Writing, from The University of California, Riverside. As an African-American male, Ayize's focus has been consistently on underrepresented communities in the sacred plant community. He's spoken about his work at the Graduate Theological Union, The University of California, Berkeley, Yale’s Young scholar’s program, Kings College of London, Howard University, the University of San Francisco, and Diablo Valley College, to name a few.
Ayize is the author of four books. His shorter works can be found in The L.A. Review of Books, The Wakanda Dream labs, The Believer, and Racebaitr. He holds three Master's degrees: Divinity, Psychology, and Fine arts, Creative Writing.