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American and European corporations have a centuries-old history of bastardizing and profiting off of the ceremonial plants and drugs used by Indigenous cultures in the Americas. The most notorious is perhaps tobacco, used for sacred purposes across different Indigenous groups like the Seminole and the Navajo for thousands of years in a form that would be unrecognizable to most of us. It was far more concentrated and much harder to inhale. But as Europeans began to colonize the Americas, they pushed Indigenous people off of their land, making it harder to cultivate and use for their ceremonies.
Tobacco was removed from its ceremonial roots and uses, while retaining the branding of Indigenous cultures. “Over time, American companies developed lighter varieties of tobacco that, with the help of filters, could be inhaled into the lungs, leading to the health scourge that nicotine addiction causes worldwide,” Alberto Ribas-Casasayas a professor of Spanish and Latin American studies at Santa Clara University who specializes in the role of psychoactives in culture, particularly in Mexico and Southern Europe.
Tobacco is far from the only substance with forgotten Indigenous origins to be commodified. The production of cocoa, once considered sacred in Aztec culture, quickly came under control by colonial settlers in the 1500s and was a major driver of violent colonial expansion. Though cannabis didn’t originate in the Americas, it was first introduced to Indigenous people by settlers in the 1600s, and quickly became sacred to some tribes in Mexico who discovered its psychoactive effects. Fast forward to the 21st century, and we now see Western companies patent and sell cannabis seeds from plants traditionally grown in the Global South back to those very same farmers.There is a recurring pattern of appropriating and profiting off of Indigenous plants and drugs throughout history, said Ribas-Cassayas.