Wisdom Keepers & Elders
Elders, healers, and shamanic practitioners maintaining ancestral knowledge traditions around sacred plant medicines.
Psychedelic plants were not discovered by Western science. The elders, healers, and lineage organisations tracked here maintain the traditions (ayahuasca and yagé, peyote in the Native American Church, and others) within which these plants have been used for generations, and several now also engage with research, policy, and benefit-sharing debates on their communities’ behalf.
We track organisations rather than individuals, and deliberately lightly: public, source-backed information about publicly active organisations, recorded with their stated tradition and role. The knowledge these groups carry is theirs; this page is a map of who is publicly at the table, not an account of what they know.
- Organisations
- 11
- Countries
- 1
- Source-verified
- 9
Specific Groups
By country
All Organisations
Ayahuasca Foundation
Care delivery organization operating residential or intensive psychedelic-adjacent care programs.
Centro Espirita Beneficente Uniao do Vegetal (UDV)
Brazilian ayahuasca religious organization with established ceremonial structures and long-running governance around hoasca sacramental practice.
Church of the Holy Light of the Queen (CHLQ)
Oregon-based Santo Daime church describing legal operation, ceremonial continuity, and preservation of tradition in a local community context.
Conferência Indígena da Ayahuasca (Indigenous Ayahuasca Conference)
Indigenous-led governance forum focused on ayahuasca traditional knowledge protection, leadership coordination, and benefit-sharing discussions across participating peoples of the Americas.
ICEFLU Santo Daime
Santo Daime religious institution describing itself as a non-sectarian ayahuasca church with formal governance, doctrinal preservation, and ritual sacramental use.
Morning Star Conservancy
US nonprofit focused on Indigenous-led peyote conservation, church support, and reciprocal stewardship programs with Native American communities.
National Council of Native American Churches (NCNAC)
Inter-organizational Indigenous council composed of Native American Church bodies that issues public positions on peyote sacramental protection and legitimacy of Indigenous church governance.
Native American Church of North America (NACNA)
Indigenous Native American Church organization advocating for protection of peyote sacramental use, chapter governance, and religious freedom in the United States.
Regional Wixárika Council for the Defense of Wirikuta
Wixárika Indigenous authority coalition defending Wirikuta sacred sites and peyote stewardship, including legal and governance advocacy related to land protection.
Temple of the Way of LIght
Care delivery organization operating residential or intensive psychedelic-adjacent care programs.
UMIYAC
Indigenous federation of yage practitioners from the Colombian Amazon representing community authorities and traditional medicine governance in policy, stewardship, and cultural continuity efforts.
Frequently asked questions
- Who is included in this category?
Publicly active organisations: elder councils, healing lineages and their schools, syncretic churches (the UDV and Santo Daime among them), and knowledge-preservation initiatives. Individual practitioners without an organisational form are not tracked, both for accuracy and out of respect for privacy.
- How do these organisations relate to psychedelic research and industry?
Unevenly, and on their own terms. Some collaborate with researchers or participate in policy processes; others focus inward on preservation and community. Each profile records the engagement modes we can document publicly, from ceremonial leadership to research collaboration and rights advocacy.
- What is benefit-sharing and why does it involve these groups?
Benefit-sharing is the principle (formalised in the Nagoya Protocol) that communities whose knowledge and plants underpin new products should share in the benefits. As companies commercialise compounds with traditional histories, these organisations are among the parties with the strongest claim in that conversation. Our ABS & Biocultural Rights Governance category tracks the governance side.