Psychology and indigenous ceremony: A guide to context, rights, and accompaniment. – Psychology Today
August 10, 2025
Psychology and indigenous ceremony: A guide to context, rights, and accompaniment.
We’re great at talking molecules. We’re less honest about what holds a person together. Ceremony is the container: elders, songs, prayers, land, kin, language. Strip the container and outcomes wobble. Honor the container and change grows roots. That’s not poetry—that’s practice. Context is the medicine.
Why Now: The Clinical Signal
A New England Journal of Medicine (NEJM) trial found that a single, carefully delivered psilocybin session improved outcomes for treatment‑resistant depression compared with a low‑dose control (Goodwin et al., 2022). That signal explains the attention. But promise is not permission. Positive results don’t authorize appropriating ceremony or rebranding cultural practices as clinical techniques. They call us to honor the contexts that have stewarded this work for generations.
