Healing justice and psychedelic medicine are two threads braided together in the work of healer, activist, and naturopathic doctor, Diana Quinn, ND. Join Dr. Quinn as we learn about her grounding in this work and her vision for a more just and whole world.
Getting to Know Diana Quinn, ND
Dr. Diana Quinn is a licensed naturopathic doctor with a focus on psychoneuroimmunology and integrative mental health. Her clinical work has centered care of marginalized communities, including people of color, the 2SLGBTQIA+ community, and low-income populations. Dr. Quinn is a graduate of the CIIS Psychedelic-Assisted Therapies and Research program. She is a member of the Board of Psychedelic Medicine and Therapies, where she serves as co-Chair of the Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion Committee, and is a member of the Ethics Working Group with the American Psychedelic Practitioners Association.
She serves on the board of Source Research Foundation, where she chairs the Community Grant Program, and is a member of the Chacruna Institute Racial Equity and Access Committee. Dr. Quinn is the Training Director of Alma Institute, a psilocybin facilitator training program and service site in Portland, Oregon. She serves on multiple advisory boards dedicated to building ethical integrity, equity, accessibility, and structural competency in the field of psychedelics. She lives with her wife and their children on unceded Anishinaabe territory in Detroit, Michigan.
Foundations of Healing Justice
Dr. Diana Quinn’s work sits at the intersection of healing justice and psychedelic medicine. “Healing justice is a framework that seeks to intervene and respond to collective trauma, burnout, and violence in our lives and communities, and specifically to bring collective practices that transform the consequences of our oppression in our bodies, hearts, and minds. That definition was coined by Cara Page and the Kindred Southern Healing Justice Collective, which is one of the foundational roots of this work. Cara Page is a Black, queer, feminist from the South.
The origins of the healing justice framework, comes from her work and the work of other Black, femme, queer and trans folks throughout the United States but predominantly in the South in the post-Katrina era. Where in the wake of the aftermath of lack of response and the impacts on the communities from a climate disaster, Cara Page spoke with elders of the Civil Rights movement and social justice movements and asked them,
‘How did you all sustain yourselves through this work? It’s so disheartening and discouraging, and it just seems like it never ends. What kinds of things did you bring in that helped prevent burnout and helped keep people in movements going through such a disheartening and grief filled time?’”
“One of the phrases that also comes out of the healing justice lineage is that our movements themselves have to be healing, otherwise there’s no point to them. It’s this notion that we have to embed healing work into our movements, not so that folks who experienced burnout and despair or disillusionment have to go tap out of movement and come back after they’ve done some self-care.
The concept is that we need community care, and we need to weave that into our movements. Adrienne Maree Brown also says our movements need to be compelling. They need to be filled with pleasure. Otherwise, we’re not drawn to them. And what’s the point, right? If it’s not bringing us more toward aliveness and joyfulness, even in the midst of grief and so much that we’re up against with these intersecting systems of oppression, we need to have movements that hold us.
In addition, [other voices include] Susan Raffo, Anjali Taneja, Adela Nieves Martinez, Shira Hassan, Leah Lakshmi Piepzna-Samarasinha, as well as many others. [These folks are] working at the intersections of racial justice, economic justice, disability, justice, environmental justice, reproductive justice, harm reduction – all of these movements. And the thread running through them is the healing justice framework, which is a framework and not a movement in and of itself.”
“[Healing justice is] something that we can apply to whatever work that we’re doing from a social justice frame. I really like to lift up that history, the lineage, the framework, its origins, and lift up the conditions of Detroit and so much of the work and brilliance that has come out of a predominantly Black city where the infrastructure and governmental systems have just been just completely absent.
And where the intersecting systems of oppression have weighed so heavily, and the interdependence and the brilliance of folks who are working together to transform their conditions within solidarity movements, uplift themselves experience joy, experience healing and thrive. It’s really a model.”
“Naming that is important because the wellness industry has co-opted the language of healing justice, and we can put that label onto things within holistic healing space, which in and of themselves can sometimes be reproducing systems of oppression within a capitalist model, within an ableist model and so on – being part of the holistic health branch of the Medical Industrial Complex.
There’s a great quote in a piece by Leah Lakshmi Piepzna-Samarasinha where she says, “If it ain’t affordable, it ain’t healing justice. And if it’s up a flight of stairs and it’s inaccessible, it ain’t healing justice.” So I think about that as it applies to the so-called psychedelic renaissance and really embed everything I’m doing in this field within that framework.
If it isn’t accessible, if it isn’t inclusive, if it isn’t moving in right relationship with systemically oppressed people – Black and Indigenous and People of Color – if it doesn’t have equity embedded into every step of the process, then it isn’t healing justice.” This perspective of connecting healing justice and psychedelic medicine is a key aspect of Dr. Quinn’s work.
Healing Justice and Psychedelic Medicine
It takes intentional work to authentically unite healing justice and psychedelic medicine. “[Psychedelic medicine] is a space where there’s both great opportunity for transformation and healing and, at the same time, inevitably reproducing a lot of these systems of injustice. Reproducing inequitable systems largely happens because we bring it with us. No matter who we are, we are indoctrinated with these cultural values and these teachings, and it takes a tremendous amount of work often to identify and unlearn those.”
But I’m talking really just about the average sort of well-meaning person who’s here because they wholeheartedly are well-intentioned and believe in healing. And even a lot of those folks don’t necessarily have a lot of awareness of the way in which we bring this cultural overlay right with us. And that includes people who are systemically oppressed. We all have work to do.
“One of the definitions of privilege is to be unaware of how we ourselves are moving in a way that, whether it’s intentional or unintentional, is reproducing those systems. I believe that we each individually have responsibility to be in a continual process of examination of our own power and privilege and investigating the way that power dynamics show up in spaces, even within the psychedelic space.
And clearly there are folks in this field who are motivated by capitalist drives, or they’re in it for various reasons. But I’m talking really just about the average sort of well-meaning person who’s here because they wholeheartedly are well-intentioned and believe in healing. And even a lot of those folks don’t necessarily have a lot of awareness of the way in which we bring this cultural overlay right with us. And that includes people who are systemically oppressed.
We all have work to do. Folks who are Black, Indigenous, and People of Color, Two-Spirit, LGBTQ folks, folks who are otherwise experiencing intersecting identities of oppression, tend to have defacto a more acute awareness. Because we’re racialized, we’re gendered, we’re in these experiences where we have really no choice but to recognize the hierarchies and imbalances of power.
My call to action for the psychedelic movement as a whole, and certainly the spaces of education, spaces of community care practices, is to increase our embodied awareness. Of how we move, what our identities are, how we’re holding power, how we’re moving with power. It’s a practice that we always have to be engaged in.
One of the pitfalls can really be thinking that there is a finish line or that there’s a perfect way of doing it or getting it right. And I want to emphasize that within this healing justice framework, perfection is not the goal. That’s absolutely not the aim. The ability to remain in a continued process of examination, the ability to be accountable, the ability to be in relationship, the ability to make a good apology.
All of these things are part of how we can do right in community. We certainly need those in all of our spaces, including spaces that are strictly BIPOC or People of the Global Majority spaces. Because even though People of Color can often experience a settling and an ease that may not be available in predominantly white spaces, like the psychedelic community as a whole, it’s still not perfect, because anti-Blackness, anti-Indigeneity still exist, ableism, transphobia, all of these things can still creep in. This is a commitment, and it’s an ongoing practice within community.”
Because we’re racialized, we’re gendered, we’re in these experiences where we have really no choice but to recognize the hierarchies and imbalances of power. My call to action for the psychedelic movement as a whole, and certainly the spaces of education, spaces of community care practices, is to increase our embodied awareness. Of how we move, what our identities are, how we’re holding power, how we’re moving with power. It’s a practice that we always have to be engaged in.
“Where I see folks who are really doing good work and taking this on and living in a practice of being teachable and learning in public – really practicing along these lines, there’s numerous examples. Just to name a few of them, I want to lift up the Ancestor Project, Courtney Watson and the Doorways Clinic, the Sana Healing Collective in Chicago, the folks behind the Psychedelic Survivors, Psychedelic Interpersonal Harm Reduction, Robin Divine and Black People Trip, and the Fireside Project. These are just a handful of folks. And then a couple of spaces that I have had the privilege to work with, and on.
The Psychedelic Liberation Collective, which is a group of People of Color, Queer, and Trans folks who offer monthly free psychedelic integration spaces for People of Color and LGBTQ folks, as well as anti-racism psychedelic space for white allies. So, this is a collective of folks where, for almost two years now [we’ve been] in this practice of learning together, working on a very small scale, being in relationship where we move slowly and with intention. I
t’s been not perfect. We’re human, and we have learned as we have gone, but it’s one example of the kind of a space that’s really striving to move in alignment with these values and not just [being] performative or virtue signaling.”
“Another space that I’m working in currently is the Alma Institute, which is a psilocybin facilitator training program based in Portland, Oregon. We haven’t launched yet, we’re still in the development stage at this time. The situation under Measure 109 is still an emerging process. And with Oregon being the first of its kind to have a state regulatory model, there’s a lot that is being figured out as we go.
With this organization, every step of the way, all of the movement has been very thoughtful and intentional and really trying to recognize where mistakes have been made and make amends, and offer repair, and again, it’s not perfect.”
And I want to emphasize that within this healing justice framework, perfection is not the goal. That’s absolutely not the aim. The ability to remain in a continued process of examination, the ability to be accountable, the ability to be in relationship, the ability to make a good apology. All of these things are part of how we can do right in community.
“We’re human and we bring all of these frameworks of intersecting oppression with us. In my experience, this is one of the few spaces where an incredible group of people have come together to develop something that is, at its core, in right relationship to the medicine, to the Indigenous stewards of this medicine, specifically the Mazatec.
Although there have been global traditions of sacred mushroom cultures around the world, the Mazatec have been tremendously impacted, as we know, because of the histories of colonial impact directly to the communities. We bring the structural analysis and understanding of the so-called Psychedelic Renaissance itself as a continuation of colonization.
There are so many of these conditions wherein the state regulatory or decriminalized model is decriminalizing plant medicine that isn’t even native to this country, right? Without the participation or involvement and engagement with the Indigenous stewards of those medicines – who, by the way, have often unequivocally requested divestment, specifically from sacred medicines, like Peyote, Ayahuasca, and Iboga. We need a wider reckoning. And where we are seeing that in these spaces, it is really refreshing and encouraging.”
“The term decolonization, I think that’s a tricky word to apply to psychedelic medicine or psychedelic healing for those reasons. Because also to me, decolonization first means Land Back. It means deferring to Indigenous expertise in ways of knowing, even when we don’t like what the recommendation is – which is just leave it alone. There’s a lot of work to be done in the space.
Where we are seeing that, where so-called decolonization of healing is occurring, it’s often this reclamation or reconnecting with ancestral wisdom and ways of resilience and ways of knowing, which for many People of the Global Majority, have been taken overtly taken from our people. Our traditions having been cut off from us. So, part of this healing process falls within the work of decolonization.” This work is vital to connecting healing justice and psychedelic medicine.
Healing Together
One key aspect of healing justice and psychedelic medicine is collective care. “Collective care as a part of our liberation work is really the heart of it because I feel like we can’t heal in isolation. It is one of the symptoms of white supremacist, colonial culture is this hyper individualism.
Even a lot of the way that the psychedelic movement progressed has really kind of been structured around individual care, certainly within the medicalization model, like individual healing, deep work for individuals.
And while many times there absolutely is tremendous value in that, I think that we’re remiss to not bring it back to also collective care, community care, healing together. That is something that for certainly many people within the Global Majority – People of Color, Black, Indigenous, POC – there’s a very strong collective memory and inclination toward community-based healing.
One of the modalities and technologies that we are reclaiming within the healing justice framework is the healing circle or the community circle as a technology for healing the individual as well as the whole.”
We’re human and we bring all of these frameworks of intersecting oppression with us. In my experience, this is one of the few spaces where an incredible group of people have come together to develop something that is, at its core, in right relationship to the medicine, to the Indigenous stewards of this medicine, specifically the Mazatec. Although there have been global traditions of sacred mushroom cultures around the world, the Mazatec have been tremendously impacted, as we know, because of the histories of colonial impact directly to the communities. We bring the structural analysis and understanding of the so-called Psychedelic Renaissance itself as a continuation of colonization.
“We can see that at play with community-based entheogenic healing, but also ceremony of all kinds, not specifically Indigenous ceremony, but just ceremonial space, the use of ritual, the use of song, of movement, of rhythm, of the drum, the rattle. T
hese are ancient technologies, ancient modalities for healing that we all carry in our bodies. For me, there are some of the most powerful modalities that I use for myself, on a very personal level. My relationship to those modalities has been a very personal one of a reclamation of culture loss and healing the impacts of colonization as a Mestiza.
Healing some of the effects of colonization through forced assimilation, while at the same time, recognizing my privilege and working to dismantle internalized aspects of white supremacy and white adjacency as a Mestiza person. This a system that also has been used to create a class that was designed to oppress Indigenous and Black people in Mexico.
So, holding all of those realities while forging a connection and a relationship with some of the healing traditions of my ancestral homeland, and certainly methods of healing within curanderismo, which has been a personally powerful pathway for me and has been really significant.”
The term decolonization, I think that’s a tricky word to apply to psychedelic medicine or psychedelic healing for those reasons. Because also to me, decolonization first means Land Back. It means deferring to Indigenous expertise in ways of knowing, even when we don’t like what the recommendation is – which is just leave it alone.
“I think about other ways that this has occurred in not strictly cultural spaces, but within healing justice space inside movement. I think of healing rituals, grief rituals, that we’ve held within the Allied Media Conference, for example, these last couple of years. I think of my friend Oceana Sawyer who runs a Black, Indigenous, and People of Color death café, processing holding space for grief.
The absence of spaces too, and severance of our cultural ways of handling grief, handling loss, are as impactful as those that separate us from reclaiming connections to those things that make us fully human – I think it is critical.”
“Bringing back practices of embodiment, being in the body, experiencing pleasure as well as really connecting with the natural world, with the unseen and more than human world. For myself, relationship with the natural world, with the elements, with plant allies, learning from animal teachers, making offerings, saying please and thank you.
Just very basic fundamental modalities, for me, have been the most impactful for restoring my sense of balance and stability and bringing resilience in the face of unrelenting systemic oppression. And this moment that we’re in with impending climate disaster and fascist authoritarian governance, and all of the things, and still being within a global pandemic.
These practices that our people have always used, magic, ritual, and ceremony to get us through. Those for me are the most powerful.”
Collective care as a part of our liberation work is really the heart of it because I feel like we can’t heal in isolation. It is one of the symptoms of white supremacist, colonial culture is this hyper individualism. Even a lot of the way that the psychedelic movement progressed has really kind of been structured around individual care, certainly within the medicalization model, like individual healing, deep work for individuals.
Joy, Healing Justice, and Psychedelic Medicine
Connection is also a key part of healing justice and psychedelic medicine. “I feel that restoring connection is at the heart of it. We inherently experience joy when we are in right relationship. There was a teaching given to me at one time that all wounds are the same wound. The wound of separation, the foundational wound being separation from the divine, from the natural world, and then separation from each other.
The belief that we are separate, that we are individuals rather than being this interdependent, single living organism. And that’s not this sort of spiritual bypass of like, we’re all one so let’s pretend that we’re not different. It’s a different experience of relationality that I think that we, human beings, knew for millennia. It’s relatively recently that we seem to have lost our way with that.
Anything that restores connection and relationship certainly brings me joy. Whether that’s a healing justice space, creating a collective altar together, doing grief ritual, whether we’re offering a hands-on healing modality in a circle to others – that’s some of the most powerful work.
Of course, these last few years due to COVID, there’s been a lot of separation and a lot of transition of healing spaces to virtual spaces, which doesn’t quite feel the same. I certainly yearn for a time when we can experience a lot more physical connection in space. Re-drawing connection, being reminded of our place in the cosmos, taking the long view of time, remembering long cycles of time.
For me, I get that most deeply in my relationship to the stars and planets, and my traditions, the Mesoamerican tradition. Looking at long cycles of time through the Mayan and Aztec calendar and other systems of astrological ways of knowing. These are the things that bring me the most joy.”
One of the modalities and technologies that we are reclaiming within the healing justice framework is the healing circle or the community circle as a technology for healing the individual as well as the whole
Reconnection, Healing Justice and Psychedelic Medicine
Reconnecting healing justice and psychedelic medicine must also include the more than human world. “I’m thinking about the personhood of the natural world, and certainly of these sacred plant medicines as teachers.
Remembering our place as humans in relationship. And not this kind of human supremacy paradigm. I think for me, that’s the heart of it. When I think about what I would bring into the fabric of this field, what comes to mind is also imagining new possibilities, Emergent Strategy, Adrienne Maree Brown’s work. We’ve kind of mentioned her Pleasure Activism, but the Emergent Strategy piece is about imagining new possibilities. We’re limited.
She says something in the book, loss of imagination is one of the spoils of colonialism. So far we can only conceive of putting psychedelic medicine within these existing frameworks, like the Medical Industrial Complex or the psychedelic mainstreaming process, which is existing within the set and setting of these colonial matrices of power.”
Bringing back practices of embodiment, being in the body, experiencing pleasure as well as really connecting with the natural world, with the unseen and more than human world. For myself, relationship with the natural world, with the elements, with plant allies, learning from animal teachers, making offerings, saying please and thank you. Just very basic fundamental modalities, for me, have been the most impactful for restoring my sense of balance and stability and bringing resilience in the face of unrelenting systemic oppression.
“Imagining outside of these legal constructs, or punitive, legal or medical constructs and imagining possibilities for community, modes of being in relationship, imagining local and place-based frameworks of community holding of this work and these ways of healing and imagining.
Abolitionist systems of accountability and repair, imagining communities of care wherein the psychedelic piece is really only one of a whole vast, comprehensive framework where people have their basic needs met.
Psychedelics are great, and also I care about the water, right? I care about housing our community members, I care about folks not experiencing food insecurity. Those are the things that I’d like to see, the mainstreaming of psychedelics moving into broader frameworks outside of the narrow, limited, and often oppressive ones that we currently have. Imagining cultures of consent.”
“I also think that these tools and resources exists, these are very old systems and technologies. It’s a remembering and a reclaiming – it’s not really inventing something new. Furthermore, a lot of these ways of being are currently being practiced within social justice spaces.
Different ways of being and relating, different ways of holding power, things like mutual aid and community accountability and transformative justice and pod mapping, all of these different ways of moving, adapting with intention. We don’t have to reinvent the wheel in the psychedelic space.
These exist and many have gained increased attention. We’re also very new at practicing them in this iteration of human history. So, imagining possibilities where we’re embodying commitments to social justice and equity are what I would like to bring in.”
Connecting with Dr. Diana Quinn
“I can be reached diana[at]almatraining.org. I can also be found through my website, thresholdmedicine.com, and where I have some recorded informational lectures, webinars, as well as some writing. I am currently working on a number of projects in addition to the Alma training, working at the policy level with the Board of Psychedelic Medicine and Therapies [organizations], as well as with the American Psychedelic Practitioners Association, APPA. You can reach out through any number of channels to discuss education and policy around bringing equity into psychedelics.”
