Multigenerational Perspectives of Psilocybin Mushrooms in Urban Native
A doctoral study of how this knowledge moves across generations, and what it takes to carry it forward. Status tag: In progress
My doctoral research examines how knowledge of psilocybin mushrooms is carried, interrupted, and reclaimed across generations in urban Native communities. Drawing on semi-structured interviews conducted across seventeen cities and analyzed through constructivist grounded theory, the work applies Kyle Powys Whyte's framework of collective continuance alongside cohort analysis to understand how this knowledge passes between elders and younger generations. It sits within a Two-Eyed Seeing approach, holding Indigenous knowledge systems and public health science in equal relation.
The research is paired with the Collective Continuance: Indigenous Knowledge Fellowship, which I designed and direct at the Berkeley Center for the Science of Psychedelics, the first Indigenous knowledge fellowship at a major psychedelic research center. The fellowship is both a program and a site of study: it supports early-career Indigenous scholars while serving as the basis for the survey and focus-group papers, which examine how such a model can be designed, governed, and sustained.
The three papers
Paper 1, Multigenerational perspectives. A qualitative study of how Native families hold and transmit this knowledge, and how that transmission is interrupted and restored across generations, analyzed through constructivist grounded theory. Draft in progress.
Paper 2, Survey. A study of how an Indigenous knowledge fellowship can be designed and sustained, using implementation science frameworks (CFIR and EPIS) and human-centered design to identify what helps such a program take hold. In progress.
Paper 3, Focus group. A focus-group study drawn from the Collective Continuance Advisory Council, examining how Indigenous governance and relational accountability shape a fellowship's design, analyzed through constructivist grounded theory. In progress.
