Mazatec Reciprocity

The Foundation

Seven years ago, Doña Julieta Casimiro Estrada, healer, ceremonial leader, community leader, and member of the International Council of the Thirteen Indigenous Grandmothers, passed away in her home in Huautla de Jiménez. At the recent seven-year commemoration of her passing, her family and community reflected on her incredible contributions and courage in sharing her healing practices with the world. From this commemoration steeped in prayer, her family shared concerns about the loss of Mazatec culture and traditions, and their ideas and prayers for how to keep them alive.

One message came through clearly: protect the Mazatec language.

Language is the heart of a people’s identity, worldview, and traditions. When a language fades, so too do the songs, prayers, healing practices, and the nuances of cosmology and relationship to the earth that it carries. In the Mazatec Sierra, Spanish has overtaken daily life, and many children are no longer learning their mother tongue. Without immediate action, the living thread of Mazatec culture risks further decline.

To respond, a foundation was formed, The Mazatec Cultural Center, with its pilot project focused on teaching the Mazatec language to children through music. Teaching language through song is both an effective and joyful way to learn. It helps words take root in memory while also bringing laughter, meaning, and play into the process. Just as importantly, it provides access to enriching activities that children in this rural and economically disadvantaged region would not otherwise have, nurturing creativity, pride, and cultural connection.

In partnership with the José Vasconcelos Secondary School in Huautla de Jiménez, the 1st year pilot program will begin September 15th and bring guitars and instruction to 15 students as an afterschool program, led by a respected Mazatec musician and teacher deeply rooted in cultural traditions. Over a school year, students will learn to play guitar and sing in Mazatec, culminating in a community performance broadcast on local radio and recorded. This project is a powerful act of language preservation, cultural pride, and continuity.

Guides trained and certified by Gather Well will have cultivated the skills, empathy, and attunement to skillfully and ethically serve others, fostering environments where clients feel safe, respected and empowered to explore their inner worlds.

Why we should help

The global psychedelic field is growing rapidly, yet much of its knowledge and inspiration comes from Indigenous traditions, including the Mazatec. For decades, the Mazatec have borne the burdens of cultural extraction, economic exploitation, and the erosion of their own sacred practices. While the concept of Indigenous reciprocity is increasingly discussed in the field, very few initiatives actively support the preservation of Mazatec people, culture, and traditions. The number of people worldwide benefiting from mushrooms or psilocybin as clients, practitioners, companies, and institutions far exceeds the efforts made to address the negative impacts on Mazatec culture. This imbalance is a serious problem that calls for immediate, tangible action.

Language is at the heart of culture. When language is lost, so is much of the cultural traditions and cultural identity. Linguists warn that when a language is not actively spoken by children, it can be lost within just two generations (UNESCO). Across the world, colonization has deeply threatened Indigenous languages, often intentionally, because language is the vessel of culture and one of the fastest ways to destroy culture is to exterminate native languages. Some languages have gone extinct, and with it, whole cosmologies, ways of being and relating, even existence itself in some instances. In North America First Nations children were forced into “Indian boarding schools” where speaking their language was forbidden in order to break the continuity of culture across generations.

For the Mazatec, whose traditions and spiritual practices have been carried in their language for thousands of years, the risk is not just the disappearance of words, but the disappearance of entire ways of knowing. Embedded in the Mazatec language is a spiritual worldview that shapes how one understands existence, how one prays, and how one connects with land, ancestors, and the sacred. To lose the language is to risk losing this profound way of being in relationship with all of life.

At Gather Well Psychedelics, we believe that moving forward with integrity requires a collective reckoning and acknowledgment, concrete action, and the building of new relationships founded on restored ground based on the restoration needed and dictated by the culture harmed. Two guiding practices for us are reparations and reciprocity. Reparations are tangible actions, financial, cultural, structural, and relational, intended to address harm already done. In the context of psychedelics, this means recognizing how colonialism, cultural appropriation, and systemic exploitation have impacted the Mazatec people and other Indigenous lineages. Reparative actions are commitments to return resources, decolonize our hearts, minds, and actions to mitigate future harm, and stand in active responsibility for the benefits we receive from traditions that endured great harm.

We believe the psychedelic field must first approach Indigenous cultures, like the Mazatec, from a reparative frame. Building on this foundation of acknowledgment and accountability, reciprocity can emerge through respectful, human to human relationships. Practicing reciprocity means listening closely to Mazatec elders and teachers, receiving gifts and teachings with respect, supporting initiatives they define, sustaining the cultural roots of their traditions, sharing resources thoughtfully, amplifying their voices, engaging consistently over time, protecting their land and sacred practices, and reflecting on one’s own actions to course correct when needed. It is a practice of ongoing engagement, not a one time gesture, and invites all of us to participate in a living relationship that honors the stewards of these sacred traditions.

Here is where YOU come in. This project is an exciting opportunity to transmute our collective care toward a far-reaching, culturally generative initiative. This is a chance to begin to course correct, to put our values into action, to plant seeds for a vibrant future, not to appease guilt, but from a place of seeking genuine reparations and from a place of love, love for each other, love for diversity, love for life, and gratitude for the ways the wisdom of working with the sacred mushrooms has been kept alive by the Mazatec.  

Supporting this language revitalization project is a direct way to promote change. For too long, the story of psychedelics has been marked by extraction. Together, we can pivot toward gratitude and reciprocity. With this project, the impact is tangible and immediate. Your support goes directly to Mazatec children learning and speaking their own language, helping ensure that prayers, songs, and traditions carry forward and honor the roots of these sacred medicines that have touched so many lives. 

Gather Well’s role

Through one of our founders, Naama, and her close relationships with Julieta’s family, Gather Well has listened deeply to their vision and committed to helping them bring it to life. She sat with them around a table in their home in Huautla, listening as they shared both their concerns about the loss of Mazatec culture and traditions, and their ideas and prayers for how to keep them alive. Through these conversations Julieta’s family conceived of The Mazatec Cultural Center in honor of their mother’s lifelong commitment to the Mazatec way of life, healing and prayer. They carry the passion, expertise, and prayer to guide this work, what’s needed now are the funds to make it possible. Gather Well’s team is contributing our time, energy, and financial support, and we invite our wider community to join us in reciprocity.

Your Role

Your donation directly supports the The Mazatec Cultural Center’s work to preserve the Mazatec language and culture, providing children with joyful, enriching experiences through music and community.  

If you have benefited from Mazatec sacred practices, or therapeutic work with mushrooms, especially if you benefit economically as a practitioner, organization, or company, this is an opportunity to make a meaningful gesture of respect, gratitude, and reparative action. The Mazatec people have endured the negative impacts as a result of global interest in their sacred medicine. Your support is a gesture towards acknowledging that history and building something more reciprocal. This begins with showing through action that you respect their culture and want to see its traditions and language live on. 

Donate

Your gift can make an impact

One-time gifts are deeply appreciated. Recurring monthly donations, even in small amounts, create sustained support so this project not only takes root but thrives. 

We hope for an outpouring of support. Any funds raised in excess of the amount the foundation needs for its pilot will be carefully tracked and held by Gather Well. Funds will be dispersed as they grow their initiatives. 100% funds raised by this effort will be sent to the Foundation. Gather Well is donating its time in support of their efforts.