|
…as I began
to keep track of
funding for
entheogenic research,
it became clear
to me that
more support
was needed
for women
who chose to be
public about
their work. |
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A Brief History of The Women’s Entheogen Fund
Annie Harrison
ah@well.com
The Women’s Entheogen Fund (WEF)
was created in 2002 to support the work
of women who spend a significant portion
of their professional lives researching
psychoactive plants and chemicals.
While women have historically
played a central role in investigating the
use of entheogens, their work has been
funded less frequently and has been
consistently underrepresented in the
scientific and popular entheogenic
literature.
It has been especially distressing to
see relatively few female entheogenic
researchers presenting their work at
relevant conferences over the years. This
continuing disparity was illustrated once
more at the International Symposium on
the Occasion of the 100th Birthday of
Albert Hofmann that took place in Basel,
Switzerland earlier this year. Of the
seventy-three confirmed speakers at the
event, only eight were women.
Some women who investigate entheogens
have good reasons to pursue a lower
profile than their male colleagues. Women
are often more vulnerable to retaliatory
action and frequently have less money to
defend themselves within the judicial
system. But as I began to keep track of
funding for entheogenic research, it
became clear to me that more support was
needed for women who chose to be public
about their work.
A conversation with then-MAPS staff
member Carla Higdon in the fall of 2002
was the catalyst for the creation of the
WEF. Carla was wondering aloud why
there wasn’t more support for women like
her who wanted to incorporate entheogenic
studies into an academic program. In
response to this conversation, I created the
WEF and gave Carla the first grant to
pursue her education.
Since 2003, I have provided the funds
for five other women to receive grants of
at least $5,000 from the WEF. Women
who receive the grants make recommendations
for future recipients. MAPS, which
has sponsored the WEF, has also nominated
women for funding. When Carla
passed away earlier this year, another
woman made a generous grant in Carla’s
memory, thus expanding the pool of
donors to the fund. Other women have
now stepped forward to make donations
in Carla’s honor and create more awareness
of the WEF.
I am very pleased to see the WEF
community continue to grow and acknowledge
the contributions of its
members. I would like to thank WEF
recipients Sylvia Thyssen and Fire Erowid
for taking the time to document their
valuable research here in the MAPS
Bulletin. These women form the center of
a community that I hope will continue to
support the work of female entheogenic
investigators–a proud and sacred tradition
that stretches forward from the first wise
women healers of prehistory to our
modern day woman healers, researchers
and writers.
I plan to continue supporting the
WEF and I have set aside a portion of the
money in my will to continue this funding
after my death. I invite others who value
this work to donate financially or simply
take time to honor and acknowledge the
important work of our contemporary wise
women.
I would like to close with a passage
from the chants of María Sabina, a Mazatec
curandera and a woman of great moral and
spiritual power who spent a lifetime
working with healing plants.
She is a woman of the day
She is a clean woman
She is a well-prepared woman
She is a woman of light
She is a woman of the day
Because I am a woman who lightnings
I am a woman who thunders
I am a woman who shouts
I am a woman who whistles
I am a woman who looks
into the insides of things |