Writing • Art • Music
Joseph CB Mays
Medical historian, ethnobotanist, artist, gardener.
I am inspired by the multiplicity of symbioses and mutualisms that shape the interconnected lives of all creatures, from the smallest microbe to the tallest tree. I aspire to learn from alternative ontologies that can better inform biocultural conservation, and my personal practice of devotion, curiosity, and solidarity. I seek to highlight the fundamental importance of our relationships with a society of beings, both human and more-than-human. Those relationships determine the nature of our individual and collective well-being, and where healing work can lead. How can we be more deeply rooted and grounded in gratitude and reciprocity towards the communities who sustain all of us?
Featured Works
Latest Updates
September 28, 2026
"Psychedelic" Medicine and Indigenous Sovereignty at the World Ayahuasca Forum, 2026
June 02, 2026
A eulogy for my Grandmother, Nancy George Bailey Hesler; learning how to love each other better.
Dec 10, 2020
Responses to Globalization by the Yanesha of Tsachopen, Peru--against alienation, spectacle, and inaction.
Dec 28, 2021
A Respectful Path Forward for the Psychedelic Movement: on reorienting ourselves toward the work of others
About
Joseph Mays received his MSc in Ethnobotany from the University of Kent researching responses to globalization by the Yanesha of central Peru. Graduating with biology and anthropology degrees from Virginia Commonwealth University, he published a medicinal plant guide for the Jama-Coaque Ecological Reserve in Ecuador, and he also holds a certificate in Psychedelic Assisted Therapies from Naropa University. After serving as director of the Chacruna Institute's Indigenous Reciprocity Initiative for five years, he became the Program Advisor in 2024, where he continues to partner with Indigenous community organizations throughout Latin America.
His current research focuses on the History of Indigenous Movements for Human Rights in the Americas, looking at struggles for community autonomy in the Great Plains, Mexico, and Amazonia. He is interested in how Indigenous political strategies for sovereignty integrate ideas of gift, reciprocity, and relational ontologies reflected in ritual and ceremony, with particular emphasis on their intersection with the psychedelics movement in the Global North. Joseph is a PhD candidate in the History of Medicine at the University of Saskatchewan.
