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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.
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Ayize Jama-Everett
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.
ABOUT US
The
Project
Our goal is to create a documentary about a gathering of Black luminaries that do work in the psychedelic space. We’ll join 35 key members from all around the country in a safe place and give participants the chance to share their strengths, experience, hopes, and challenges within the psychedelic space.
The goal is to highlight those doing great work and to expand the reach of these important ways of healing to more Black people. We also wish to de-stigmatize these substances so that they’re no longer seen as “White people stuff” and more as the natural balms and salves to Black people’s psyches that we’ve been using for millennia.
The documentary will cover not only the conference but the current state of Black people in the psychedelic space as a whole.
The conference will be a three-day, invite-only, all-Black affair. It will focus on those who’ve had experience in the areas of psychedelics and the arts, activism, academics, sciences, entrepreneur, cultivators, and those still working in the underground scene.
A three-day filmed conference to document where participants have been and what they’ve seen and to look at what’s coming next for Black people and Substance use.
WHY
Because we’re tired of asking for a seat at someone else’s table. Because the rhetoric around people of color in psychedelic spaces has mostly been for show. Because the lasting positive impact that these medicines can have on Black communities is not being fully acknowledged.
Because the biggest impediment to Black people participating in this work is not seeing Black people participating in this work. Because when Black people win, we all win.
Because we will literally change the world once we’re brought back into proper relationship with the plants, animals, compounds, and communities around us.
When
The third quarter of 2022
WHERE
Northern California
(Details given a later date)
HoW
Through the grace of our ancestors, sweat equity, community support, prayer, and the generous financial support of people like you.