Entheogenesis Australis (EGA) - Our Values
Entheogenesis Australis is a charitable, educational organisation established in 2004; we provide opportunities for critical thinking and knowledge sharing on ethnobotanical plants, fungi, nature and sustainability.
Through our conferences and workshops, we aim to celebrate the culture, art, politics and community around medicine plants in the hope to better wellbeing for humankind and the planet.
Entheogenesis Australis would like to celebrate and support diversity within our community. We hope to offer a welcoming and accessible space across our events and conferences, and the community more broadly.
Entheogenesis Australis exists to enhance the Australian natural environment by:
E – Encouraging the propagation, cultivation, conservation, preservation and sharing of plants and fungi of ethnobotanical significance whilst nurturing botanical environments.
G – Growing community and developing connections through conversation, events, media and the creative arts, acting as a multidisciplinary nexus for knowledge sharing within the field of ethnobotany.
A – Advancing botanical discussion through research, critical thinking, education, creativity, innovation, and awareness about plants, fungi and related compounds with potential beneficial applications for humankind and the natural environment.
Entheogenesis Australis Statement on Black Lives Matter, Racism, and Respecting Traditional Knowledge
Entheogenesis Australis (EGA) stands with the Black Lives Matter movement and all who wish to address the harm of racially motivated discrimination, violence and injustice.
We condemn the persecution, inequality and systemic abuse of human rights that Black, Indigenous and People of Colour (BIPOC) continue to endure in Australia and around the world. These issues are complex, sensitive, long-standing, and deeply entrenched in society.
Our community benefits greatly from sacred and medicinal plants and from Indigenous knowledge on their use and cultural significance. EGA strongly believes that how we receive and share information is a powerful act and requires the utmost care and consideration.
EGA respects the rights of Traditional Owners to choose when and where to share knowledge - botanical or otherwise - outside of their communities. There is a long history of exploitation, misappropriation, and destruction of Indigenous knowledge and culture by colonial powers, from government policies through to corporate and commercial interests. Healing racism in our community includes understanding and adhering to correct cultural protocols, respecting intellectual property, and proper consultation. This is a learning process, and we are striving to improve in these areas.
The prohibition and criminalisation of certain native plants and their traditional use, as well as other psychoactive substances, disproportionately impacts BIPOC communities across the planet. The failed war on drugs is founded on and inextricably tied to systemic racism, with police forces acting as a tool of dispossession, domination and control through aggressive tactics and racial bias. In Australia, the shameful fact is that First Nations people are incarcerated at a higher rate than any other people in the world, in 2020 making up around 28% of the prison population but only 3.3% of the country’s population. Our drug laws serve to continue cycles of disadvantage and trauma within these communities.
In seeking to create a better and fairer world with the help of plants, we must not ignore the very real and important issues of equal access, intersectionality, privilege, complicity, and intergenerational trauma. We acknowledge that action is far more meaningful than words.
EGA is committed to amplifying BIPOC voices through our programming and media content, and to making our community, our events, and our online presence safe, equitable and inclusive spaces for all. We endeavour to listen, support, learn, evolve, and proactively engage in the ongoing conversation to combat racism at all levels of society.
Please click here to download the Black Lives Matter statement
Respectfully
Entheogenesis Australis
www.entheogenesis.org
Acknowledgment of Country
We acknowledge that in Australia, we live and work in a stolen country that was never ceded. This dispossession, from which many in our community continue to benefit materially, causes ongoing trauma to Indigenous people and communities.
We recognise that we benefit from the knowledge and insights of First Nations people, including long relationships with the plants we revere, from around the world. We acknowledge that knowledge of First Nations people has often been obtained disrespectfully.
We encourage all in our community to learn to do our work the "right way", to understand and recognise different cultural protocols, and to show respect.
EGA enthusiastically supports the Uluru Statement, which calls for First Nations' voices in Australian parliament, for treaty, and for truth. We encourage each and all our community to take up the invitation in the Uluru Statement to work through Australia's unfinished business.