Seuraavassa luentotapahtumassamme lähdetään tutkimusmatkalle alueille, joilla alkuperäiskansojen ja länsimaisten kulttuurien ymmärryksen ja maailmassa olemisen tavat rihmastoituvat. Sessio on tällä kertaa englanninkielinen, joten niin on myös loput tästä tiedotteesta. Puhujiemme Aili Pyhälän ja Joshua Foutsin saate kertoo seuraavaa:
Psychedelics are having a moment. Research funding is flowing, clinical trials are expanding, and ancient plant medicines are entering the mainstream at remarkable speed. But as this renaissance unfolds, a question quietly insists itself: whose knowledge is being centered?
Who sets the questions, defines the methods, and decides what counts as evidence—and who is invited merely to decorate the stage?
In this talk, we share what we learned from an experiment in doing things differently. In September 2026, we co-directed the first World Ayahuasca Forum—a gathering of nearly 2,000 people in which Indigenous Amazonian leaders, not outside experts, set the terms. They shaped the vision, the process, and the content.
What emerged was not always comfortable: it asked Western participants to listen rather than lead, to sit with unfamiliar protocols, and to confront the assumption that their own knowledge systems are the default. We will speak candidly about what worked, what didn't, and what it means to translate a vision of shared governance into lived practice.
Out of that process has grown something larger: the New Time of Alliance—a sustained effort to build relationships, protocols, and trust between worlds. This talk is an invitation to consider what such an alliance might ask of us, and what it could open.
You do not need to know anything about ayahuasca, or about the Forum, to join. You need only be curious about what becomes possible when we gather on genuinely new terms.
The event takes place in Helsinki on Thursday November 5th, from 5pm to 9pm, of which the lecture 6pm–8pm.
In addition to the program, we offer free-form interactions and interesting encounters, snacks and a library with a ton of books related to psychedelics.
Would you like to participate? You’ll get all the relevant information by joining Psykedeelisen sivistyksen liitto ry’s email list here. NOTE: When you get to the relevant form, please write “luento” in the field “Muuta?”. We recommend doing this before the event date so that we’ll have enough time to respond!
About the speakers:
Aili Pyhälä is co-founder of Tima, an advocacy organisation in service to regenerative, biocultural, and systems-change work. She co-directed the World Ayahuasca Forum 2026 in partnership with ICEERS, the Yorenka Tasorentsi Institute, the Nixiwaka Institute, and a circle of allies worldwide. With a background in socio-environmental sciences, environmental justice, and human rights advocacy, Aili has spent over two decades weaving between worlds—academia and activism, policy and ceremony, Indigenous biocultures and global institutions. Her current inquiry centres on what long-term alliance-building between Indigenous and non-Indigenous worlds might look like in practice.
Joshua Fouts is co-founder of Tima and of EarthCodes, a U.S. nonprofit that discovers, preserves, and safeguards Nature's knowledge, with the aim of training artificial intelligence on the intelligence of the living world. He co-directed the World Ayahuasca Forum 2026 with Aili Pyhälä. An anthropologist by training, strategist, and cultural translator, he has spent 40 years at the meeting point of Indigenous cultures, international relations, media, and environmental advocacy—including founding the USC Center on Public Diplomacy and serving as Executive Director of Bioneers. His current work asks what the "other AI," Ancestral Intelligence, can offer a world investing everything in the artificial kind.