From Origins to Three Years Old

By Miriam Volat

IMC Fund Founding Co-Director

It is with incredible gratitude that we are completing our third year here at IMC Fund. We were born from listening to many prayers. The dreams and goals of our partners reflect fundamental and simple human aspirations - how can we live harmoniously on this precious planet that not only gives us life, but beauty and connection? 

In this moment of changing climates, biodiversity loss, ongoing pressures from extractive industries, the need for justice, plus rising global mental and physical health concerns - where can we place support, time, energy and money in ways that will lift us all up together?

Our IMC Fund Partners — founding, current and future — are all organizations or processes built on the spiritual foundations of their elders, actively working to protect their medicines, territories and community health through their own cultural methodologies. Each carries prayers for their future generations. Not just to maintain access to their medicines, but also to maintain the autonomy to weave their medicines practices into the stewarding of their land, waters, nutrition, health and community relationships. 

As our baby organization takes steps into toddlerhood, I am deeply amazed at how it has grown and the form it is taking. Five years ago, as an ecologist and conservationist, I had the profound honor to travel to an Indigenous sacred site in central Mexico. There, a singer, a Wixárika Marakame, was ceremonially working to give guidance on maturing the biocultural conservation of Indigenous Medicine Communities (note: communities here means the sacred medicine or power plant, other cultural medicines, the plants, animals, land, humans of all ages, and elements [fires, waters, celestial beings, spirits] that are woven together with that medicine). 

Under the stars, like the Wixárika singer, have been weaving their ways of surviving and thriving on Mother Earth, with gratitude for all that she provides, for millennia. Each and every generation tends to the processes of culture and the health of individuals to not only continue life, but cultivate a good life for future generations. In many places, powerful teacher-medicines have supported and guided the path of traditional human ways of place-based life. Through his song, the Wixárika singer saw that it was an important time for a trustworthy process to be built, a process that would serve to strengthen and nurture these communities as their knowledge and medicines were also being sought by global efforts for healing.

We began by consulting with three established, spiritually-informed, Indigenous-led biocultural conservation organizations: one in Africa, one in South America and one in North America. Would an organization where partners came from different traditions be effective? Would fundraising money from multiple spheres be welcome? And could we channel resources from climate, environmental, Indigenous rights and Psychedelic spaces to ensure the fortification of infrastructure, governance, land tenure and cultural vitality of Indigenous communities in their territories?

What would an organization look like that would be trustworthy in the territories and trustworthy to discerning philanthropic supporters?

In Western Africa, where the elephants long ago taught the Pygmy to use Iboga, Blessings of the Forest began a careful process of village-based and governmental interventions to protect  the Bwiti way of initiation and tending community health. This ensures the Bwiti continue to have access to abundant sacred bark (Iboga) as their medicine became more and more in demand for vital healing outside of its original territory.

On the South American continent, in 1997, putting aside historical conflicts, a spiritually-led organization joined representatives from 5 Indigenous communities in a process to protect their territories, medicine and future in the Colombian Amazon. UMIYAC was born, guided by grandmas and grandpas and ceremony to strengthen every aspect of culture while ensuring access to spiritual remedy (Yagé/Ayahuasca) for women, men and youth. Rooted in the life plans of the villages, UMIYAC also works for the  the Amazon rainforest to be able to maintain its astounding biodiversity and clean water and air-also benefiting the rest of the world.

In North America, in 2018, as an answer to the prayers of many many grandparents, a Peyote conservation organization was formed. The Indigenous Peyote Conservation Initiative (IPCI) was designed to serve as a process of reconnection for Indigenous Peyote peoples to their responsibility of tending to their medicine in the face of modernity and its changes. A spiritual homesite in the Peyote cactus’ native habitat was secured as a hub for repopulating the medicine and building deep roots for the youth in cultural, ceremonial and spiritual ways. This was a spiritual and practical effort, guided by ceremonial leaders in service to the prayers of their grandparents. 

To my amazement, after our initial query, and support to move forward from the groups mentioned here, a group of seed funders readily agreed to substantive initial financial donations for our first four years. This was the financial nutrition we needed to form a trusted body with decision-makers from the territories and advisors both technical and spiritual to guide our process. For me — as an initiating director and as an ecologist fiercely in love with planet earth — it has been the most profound of honors to support the formation of the IMC Fund - now an Indigenous-led, culturally and spiritually informed philanthropic organization. 

This week, as we enter our fourth year, our new co-directors (link to Miguel and Madsa' intros) — both territorial people deeply experienced in community processes — will accept the baton of guiding our staff and overseeing the relationships with the twenty-two plus partner organizations which now make up the IMC Fund. Through community-based assessment and daily listening, we continue to learn about the needs and complexities of navigating community health and building trust in medicine communities from our partners. We have already deeply impacted the future capacity for thriving in the five biocultures (Iboga, Ayahuasca, Toad, Mushroom and Peyote) we work with. I won’t repeat the statistics here (they are in this impact report), but we have been able to support unprecedented successes around the globe. 

Guided by not only our partners, but by our Conservation Committee of grandmas, grandpas and ceremonial leaders, as we enter toddlerhood, our commitment only deepens. Our funders are more and more willing to refine and cultivate a deeper understanding of the importance of our mission: to ensure a future where Indigenous Peoples, their medicines and knowledges, thrive for generations to come, and support their critical role in the health of our planet and the healing of many of the wounds of the last 400 years.

We have grown quickly. Having laid the foundation this first three years, the next three years are even more critical - we have significantly invested in community processes that we must continue to support. The urgency of our times warrants full backing of Indigenous-led traditional medicine communities. This is one of those moments in history where a lasting difference can be made through support and respect and trust. As the psychedelic field rapidly grows, as the 6th greatest extinction of precious species continues, as climate change advances, we must fortify the structures and programs to preserve these biocultures. The IMC Fund needs to navigate the need for a $5.5 million budget, a budget that will continue to grow in the future as we bring on more partners and make space for those partners to have key roles in IMC Fund processes. We need better communications, we need to continue to learn, we need to constantly redefine what right relationship looks like, so that together we can navigate the complexity of these times.

I know we can do it. I am so proud of our work over the last three years, and everything that the IMC Fund has become in this short time.

This is my happy birthday message to you dear IMC Fund! We are so glad you were born!! And certainly me and many will be working for your mission and partners for many many years to come.