Made up of specialists and traditional knowledge keepers with a mix of Western and Indigenous expertise, the IMC Fund’s Conservation Committee is at the heart of its governance structure, which also includes an Operations Committee and a committee of Spiritual Leaders. This Indigenous-led “whole systems approach” drew the interest of Sutton King, an Afro-Indigenous activist of the Menominee and Oneida Nation who became the Program Manager of Engagement and Benefit sharing at the fund.

For King, true allyship with Indigenous peoples means following the United Nations principle of free, prior, and informed consent. It also means ensuring that wealth is returned to these communities

For the launch of the Urban Indigenous Collective (UIC), the co-founders set up a booth on Randall’s Island, in New York City, for an event in honor of Indigenous People’s Day. They arranged their booth comfortably, with tables, cushions and shade, and asked Indigenous folks to fill out a survey about their mental and physical health priorities.

“It was really a community-based needs assessment to be able to inform the direction of our programming, services and advocacy,” says Sutton King, one of the co-founders and UIC’s president. “What we identified was the need for a community space to offer services, a space that is both accessible and safe.”

The result: In July 2020, the members of UIC produced ShockTalk, a free pilot app on Facebook Messenger that connects all Indigenous people to Indigenous therapists for telehealth visits. The service helps people book appointments while navigating hurdles like benefits and insurance. UIC has partnered with researchers at Columbia University to keep testing and improving their service and expects to release a mobile app.

Program manager Sutton King and co-director Miriam Volat acknowledge that as the psychedelic industry has grown, companies have become increasingly interested in consulting with Indigenous peoples on specific medicines, whether to obtain knowledge, offer financial support, or both—behavior that is neither welcome nor in line with Indigenous protocols, which King notes are not transactional but based on kinship.