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[0:00] Tonya Pinkins: Hi, this is Tonya Pinkins, and you're listening to my podcast, You Can't SAY THAT, the Show Where You Can on the Broadway Podcast Network.

[0:13] Tonya Pinkins: My dad used to always call me a square. That was because I was like a square. I was a total nerd. I like to read. Um I spent all my time reading. I didn't go to parties, I didn't drink, I didn't smoke. I think I didn't drink or smoke because my mother was a five-pack-a-day smoker, and I didn't like how people acted when they were drinking. And I just assessed myself at a very young age as being someone who would have an addictive personality. So I was like, if I start that, I'm gonna do it so much that it's not gonna be good. So I never do. So I didn't hang out with people after school or ever go to the clubs and in fact I was married with children by the time I was 25 years old. So two years ago, when I had my first entheogen, which is the new word for it or psychedelic experience, it was profound.

And before I did it, I did all this research. I was reading because I was like, you know what? If I do this, I could die, I might go crazy, and I won't even know I've gone crazy, and I will never come back. So it was very scary for me. So I did all this research, and you know, the people were like Terrence McKenna and Michael Pollan and you know, South America and mushrooms and just all this stuff. It was like I couldn't find any black people who were talking about entheogens or psychedelics, like none, and it was very white male. And so I just started this search trying to find where were the people of color who were doing entheogens, and it was really, really hard. Um I found one man online, and he's gonna be on one of my podcasts, uh, Baba Kalinda E. But the first person I found is my next guest. So join me in welcoming from the Drug Policy Alliance. And I'm gonna let you say the other name, P O C psychedelic Collective. Ifetayo Harvey, welcome, Ifetayo.

[2:05] Ifetayo Harvey: Thank you, Tonya. Thank you for having me. I'm excited to be here.

[2:12] Tonya Pinkins: Awesome. So, you know, why are there no people of color in entheogens? Why don't we have any books? Why aren't you know, we can't we find any research about us?

[2:23] Ifetayo Harvey: Wow. Well, how much time do you have? Well, I would say the simplest way to say that to answer that question is because a lot of our practices around entheogens, you know, existed all throughout the world um for centuries, but because of things like colonialism, uh the war on drugs, a lot of these practices were taken from us. And so is particularly for black folks, African descendants. Um we come from cultures that were mostly oral history-based, right? So a lot of our um practices were taken from us, and we have it's really hard to find any uh you know written documents. And I and I imagine as you say that I think about the Native Americans that I know who say that there are stories that they have never told and will never tell the white people.

Um that they only pass orally um to one another. So I think that there's probably some secrecy involved in it. I I think of that biblical quote for him who has ears, let him hear. And so there are things that just are not shared because if you are called to it, the message will get to you. Like I found you.

[3:46] Tonya Pinkins: Yes, yes. I was I was so surprised when you found me. I was like, wait, who is this person? Like, how did they get my email? And I Googled you, and you're an actress. I was like, wait, this can't be right. Well, I was, you know, on a mission to understand because I also had read a lot about melanin as a neurotransmitter and the way melanin and DMT interact. So I just reasoned that whatever the experiences Terrence McKenna and Michael Pollan and these white guys were having, it would not be able to compare to the experiences that people who have more melanin, which is a neurotransmitter that interacts with DMT would have. So I was like, I want to know what people of color are doing with this, and I want to experience this with people of color.

[4:31] Ifetayo Harvey: Yes, that's something that Kalindi, he's very big on is the melanin and DMT. I don't know a ton about that, but I do know that in my experience, you know, being in drug policy, working with uh psychedelic organizations, there's not a lot of folks who look like me when you go to events and conferences, there's no talk of how the war on drugs impacted black and brown communities, or even indigenous folks, there's really no consideration for race at all. And if you bring it up, you're being seen as divisive and you know not really enlightened or whatever, you know, BS there's right. So that really motivated me to create my own space because I felt like if white folks can't understand our trauma and our pain and our our ancestral um pain that we carry with us, then how are they gonna help us heal from that?

And it was really important for me to be able to create a space for folks who really need this this type of medicine the most. You know, black and brown folks, we are so traumatized by this country's history that we don't even realize all the stuff that we're carrying.

[5:52] Tonya Pinkins: Yeah, I I had taken a class in Indigenous focusing oriented therapy, which is therapy for people living in genocidal cultures, which we are all living in in genocidal culture. So I read and I'm it's your story to tell that you came to uh being interested in drug policy because of a personal drug thing in your life. Would you tell us what that was?

[6:12] Ifetayo Harvey: Sure, sure. Sure. So I came into drug policy because my father was convicted of a drug offense when I was about four years old and he was sentenced to 15 years in prison. Um he served about eight of those years and was deported in 2004 back to Jamaica. So that's where he lives today. Um but growing up as a kid, you know, I always it was like a secret that I was holding holding in myself. It I didn't feel like I could talk to many people about it, really only my mom. And there was just so much stigma around prison and folks folks with criminal records. So I've I carried a lot of shame um throughout my childhood and didn't really know how to articulate all of that. And so when I came across the Drug Policy Alliance, I was like, whoa, this is like amazing that this organization exists and um I was really lucky that I was able to get an internship with them.

And you know, as soon as I told my story to my would-be supervisor, he was like, Oh, yeah, I want you here, like immediately. So I I felt super duper comfortable at DPA. It's a very unique place because what do they do? Well, we do um advocacy and policy work around drug laws and um drug policies, mostly in the US, but we do some international work. So we do everything from legalizing marijuana to uh policies around uh preventing overdose and enacting harm reduction. So it was the first place that I came across that spoke about folks who use drugs, folks who were involved in drug economies with compassion and without judgment and stigma. And so it's really it's it's challenged my own perceptions of folks who use different drugs.

I come from a family where you know alcoholism was common, and even though alcohol is not that stigmatized of a drug, I still have had to unpack a lot of my own biases towards folks who drink. Uh kind of how you were talking about your mom and the five-pack-a-day thing. That's definitely something that you know when you see that in your childhood, it stays with you, and you're always like it's in the back of your mind that, oh, that could be me or something like that. So being at DPA was really it was a healing experience to be able to talk about, you know, my my trauma about being separated from my dad.

[8:51] Tonya Pinkins: Now you you call it drugs, and I tend to mostly call it medicine. Yeah, um, plant medicine, fungi medicine, uh animal medicine. Um I've done combo, which is the Brazilian green tree frog and some other plants, and so and fungi, the Silic Simons. Um so I like to call it medicine because I think they're teachers. Uh so coming with this background and this shame, how do you overcome that internal stigma shame to even ever try a drug?

[9:27] Ifetayo Harvey: That's that's that's a really good question. I think growing up, I was kind of like you, like I didn't go to parties, I read, I had a part-time job, I was super involved in all my clubs at school because I thought that well, maybe if I'm super obedient and stay out of that stuff, then nothing bad will happen to me, right? And that's kind of uh, I guess a control thing or trying to feel in control. Um so I stayed away from drugs for the most part in high school, alcohol. I stayed away from that. There were some moments here and there, and one of my friends uh senior year was like, Oh, let's smoke this bowl. And I was like, What is this? And I had a really good experience.

[10:13] Tonya Pinkins: What is a bowl?

[10:14] Ifetayo Harvey: I don't know what that is. It's a smoking pipe for a weed.

[10:20] Tonya Pinkins: Yeah, so it was like the glass pipes you see in the bodega.

[10:23] Ifetayo Harvey: Yeah, yeah, yeah. So we smoked that, and I was just laughing the entire night, and I had a great experience, but even then I wasn't really trying to seek it out until I got to college, my freshman year, and going from South Carolina to Massachusetts was a big adjustment for me, and I was met with the with more anxiety than I was used to around my school work and just acclimating myself to being in a very white elite campus. And so I started smoking weed again, uh probably like my second semester, and it actually helped me a lot. It was an anxiety reliever, it was a stress reliever from being in this hostile environment.

[11:05] Tonya Pinkins: Mm-hmm.

[11:05] Ifetayo Harvey: Yeah. I was able to write my papers better. I was just able to focus on my work and not get bogged down by my anxiety. So I started I started smoking regularly with my friends. It was like a ritual we had, like at the end of the day, we would just go smoke and kind of bitch about our lives, and we feel good after that. That was our thing.

[11:27] Ifetayo Harvey: And uh I did, you know, at some moments I've definitely felt judged by certain classmates, you know. We're doing marijuana.

[11:35] Tonya Pinkins: Mm-hmm.

[11:35] Ifetayo Harvey: Okay. Yeah, they would be like, You're a pothead.

[11:38] Tonya Pinkins: Yeah, like stop being high all the time.

[11:39] Ifetayo Harvey: Like, why do you oh uh Did you get good grades? You know, I'm I maintained my 3.0, so that's all I wanted.

[11:46] Tonya Pinkins: Okay.

[11:47] Ifetayo Harvey: Okay. You know, yeah. I I got I got good grades, and I was actually I was awarded student leader of the year my senior year, so I was thank you.

[11:57] Tonya Pinkins: I would say that the pot didn't hold you back.

[11:57] Ifetayo Harvey: Exactly, exactly. Um so yeah, it it was also complicated being a leader on campus and you know, dabbling in this. I did actually get in trouble once.

[12:14] Tonya Pinkins: And what happened?

[12:15] Ifetayo Harvey: Me and a bunch of friends were in a room smoking, and someone caught the campus police on us, and he's like banging on the door, and my friend kind of has a smart mouth. He's like, What's that I smell? And she's like, uh, candles.

[12:31] Tonya Pinkins: So we got it, we had to write a letter to the house community there telling them how we impacted, negatively impacted their house community, and blah blah blah.

[12:45] Ifetayo Harvey: So it wasn't that big of a deal, but you know, it was it was still something and some shaming.

[12:50] Tonya Pinkins: Some shaming, right, right.

[12:52] Ifetayo Harvey: And so I did my internship with EPA.

[12:57] Tonya Pinkins: The EPA?

[12:57] Ifetayo Harvey: DPA, sorry, DPA, yeah.

[12:59] Tonya Pinkins: And that's why you were in college.

[13:01] Ifetayo Harvey: Mm-hmm. What my junior year, and then when I got back to Smith, I actually uh got diagnosed with depression by I was seeing a therapist throughout my four years at Smith, and uh during my senior year, my mental health kind of was like dwindling a bit.

[13:21] Tonya Pinkins: Um, and then I got diagnosed with depression, and it was all almost like a confirmation bias where I was just like, oh wow, I'm I knew I was depressed, but it's different to hear it from someone else.

[13:33] Ifetayo Harvey: So I felt like I kind of went down like a rabbit hole with that, and then I got invited to speak at the drug policy alliances international drug policy reform conference in Denver.

[13:46] Tonya Pinkins: So I was doing the keynote opening plenary as a senior in college, and I was I didn't know what I was getting myself into.

[13:54] Ifetayo Harvey: They just asked me to speak, and I was like, Oh yeah, sure, no big deal. And then I get there, and they're like, Oh yeah, you're gonna be speaking in front of 1100 people.

[14:02] Tonya Pinkins: And I'm like, oh okay.

[14:05] Ifetayo Harvey: Oh my god. I was I was still nervous, but I went up there and did it, and you know, it was really again very healing for me to have that talk and very cathartic because there were so many people coming up to me afterwards saying, like, wow, like I really relate to your story.

[14:23] Ifetayo Harvey: It was folks who were men who had gotten out of prison, and they were, you know, feeling my story from the perspective of a parent or people who were working with kids who had um parents in prison.

[14:37] Tonya Pinkins: So it was really, it was a really good feeling I got from in that moment.

[14:42] Ifetayo Harvey: Um, and I made a lot of connections, but at the same time I was still dealing with this depression of mine, right?

[14:49] Ifetayo Harvey: And so later at that conference, I had the chance to go see a panel where it was a bunch of psychedelic researchers, and they were talking about um end of life uh treatment with psychedelics.

[15:03] Ifetayo Harvey: So folks with terminal illnesses, things like that. And it was really fascinating and insightful for me because a lot of the things they were saying about folks who were facing death, I kind of it it resonated with me a lot.

[15:17] Ifetayo Harvey: The anxiety, like the constant anxiety and stress and things like that. So when I got back to school, I started asking my friends, I'm like, so if I wanted to do mushrooms, how would I do them?

[15:29] Ifetayo Harvey: I started asking them for tips and stuff because they had all done it before, and I was kind of the one who was just like, uh, like I don't really feel the need to, so I'm not going to.

[15:39] Ifetayo Harvey: And then I finally was like, okay, I need to do this because the other option was to, you know, they were gonna prescribe me uh antidepressants, and my mom's an herbalist, so that was something she always like wanted me to avoid growing up.

[15:56] Ifetayo Harvey: Is like, I don't want you to get hooked on those things and not to stigmatize people who do use those and do need those but for me that was like a really big step and I wasn't sure if I it was for me so I was like I'd rather try something else so I went with mushrooms and um I got my hands on some and I remember getting one of my friends to be my sitter with me so she was sober and I cut them all up and put them in a peanut butter sandwich.

[16:26] Tonya Pinkins: How much did you have?

[16:27] Ifetayo Harvey: I took three and a half grams at first.

[16:27] Tonya Pinkins: Three and a half grams your first time now Terrence McKinsey says seven grams is the heroic dose you took three and a half most people I know they buy an eighth and they share an eighth you took three and a half grams your first time okay tell us about the first journey.

[16:44] Ifetayo Harvey: Oh man so yes oh man so Smith's campus is really great for tripping and journeying because it's the arboretum so it's really beautiful in the fall and so one Saturday morning, you know, after I ate my peanut butter sandwich.

[17:03] Tonya Pinkins: So you did it in the daytime you didn't do it at night.

[17:05] Ifetayo Harvey: Yeah I didn't do it at night. I didn't know about Calendy's method at this time. I was just like okay I wanna do you know have some time in my day to like kind of recover.

[17:15] Ifetayo Harvey: So um we went on this nature trail that's really beautiful around this pond and you're walking on mushrooms.

[17:22] Tonya Pinkins: We're walking okay did you get the nausea did you get the chills or did that skip you?

[17:26] Ifetayo Harvey: I did I did so we're walking and I start to notice the the leaves and the plants are like glistening, and I see the water like glistening and moving and everything's breathing, and I'm telling my friend, like, oh, I think it's kicking in, and she's like, Okay.

[17:41] Ifetayo Harvey: And so we go and sit sit down in this field, and I just start feeling like overwhelmed with the nausea. I was like, Oh my god, I'm I'm I'm gonna have diarrhea pretty soon.

[17:55] Ifetayo Harvey: I asked my friend, I was like, Will you judge me if I go take a shit right now? And she's like, No, no, I won't. I mean, God bless her.

[18:04] Tonya Pinkins: She's a good friend, are you still friends?

[18:05] Ifetayo Harvey: Yes, she's oh my god, she's amazing.

[18:08] Ifetayo Harvey: Oh my god. So I I went to try to go, and nothing was coming out, so I'm just like, okay. And then I see this like this uh bunch of roots like wrapped up, and when I was tripping, I it turns into a face, and it's like talking to me.

[18:26] Ifetayo Harvey: It's like, give me, give me your vomit, give it to like telling me to like to throw up, basically. It's like just give it to me, like you're gonna be okay. Just like give me your vomit.

[18:38] Ifetayo Harvey: So I was like, okay, so I just vomited, and I felt better, but I still was like, I wanna just lay down somewhere.

[18:45] Ifetayo Harvey: So me and my friend, we went back to my dorm, and I was we were in my room, and all of a s I just felt really great for a while. I was feeling really happy and giggly, and that's when it really started to kick in, and um I remember you know, kind of expecting that the depression stuff to come up, like something like a memory or something to come up, but not a lot was coming up.

[19:10] Ifetayo Harvey: I do remember I uh picked up a bookmark that my dad had given my mom, and it was uh it said it was a poem called Footsteps.

[19:22] Tonya Pinkins: And I don't know if you've ever tell it, do you know it?

[19:26] Ifetayo Harvey: It's a really beautiful poem. Do you know it?

[19:28] Tonya Pinkins: I don't know it off the top of my head, but we can find it.

[19:31] Ifetayo Harvey: Well, I know I know the gist of it.

[19:31] Tonya Pinkins: The gist.

[19:34] Ifetayo Harvey: Yeah. So basically the guy's having a conversation with God, and he's saying, you know, I I'm seeing these footsteps in the sand, and you were with me through all these tough times, but through my hardest time, you left me.

[19:47] Ifetayo Harvey: I'm only seeing one set of footsteps. Like, why'd you abandon me? And God responds, He says, I was carrying you.

[19:54] Ifetayo Harvey: And I just broke down crying. I was like, oh my God, like, I want to be carried. I want to be held.

[20:01] Ifetayo Harvey: And it was a kind of a cathartic moment for me there too. And I just like cried.

[20:08] Ifetayo Harvey: And it was good because I felt like I couldn't really cry in a long time. And then five minutes later, I'm just giggling again.

[20:16] Ifetayo Harvey: So my emotions were just like, I was really surprised by that. I'm like, wait, how can I go from being sad to laughing again? This is so weird.

[20:25] Ifetayo Harvey: But you know, now I realize that mushrooms kind of make you process things a little bit easier than faster. I I think of all of the entheogens as really intense psychotherapy.

[20:37] Ifetayo Harvey: And you're doing it with yourself. Um, whereas most of us spend our lifetime working our stuff out on other people, projecting it on them, working as if they are the problem.

[20:48] Tonya Pinkins: Yeah.

[20:48] Ifetayo Harvey: When you're doing an entheogen, you go right into your stuff and you are facing it, and there is no one there but you, and you either are gonna fight that or you're gonna be like, okay, like uh for the first couple of times I did mushrooms, I went through a couple of hours of self-loathing.

[21:06] Ifetayo Harvey: And it was like I wasn't resistant. I'm like, okay, so let's be self-loathing. How self-loathing are we? How awful are we?

[21:13] Ifetayo Harvey: And I just because I had read that it, you know, was important not to resist whatever came.

[21:18] Ifetayo Harvey: Like if it was death, you had to go with the death. But that the most important thing was to not fight it.

[21:24] Tonya Pinkins: And I don't want to interrupt you, but I want to say that I had a friend who was an alcoholic, and I wanted to introduce him to mushrooms.

[21:31] Ifetayo Harvey: And his experience of mushrooms, he's a Brit and he's very polite, and the manners are very important.

[21:37] Tonya Pinkins: And um, you know, I all I could say is it just always felt fake to me.

[21:42] Ifetayo Harvey: And when he uh did the mushrooms, what came up was murderous rage.

[21:49] Tonya Pinkins: Wow.

[21:49] Ifetayo Harvey: And for me, it was like the first time I truly saw him.

[21:54] Ifetayo Harvey: I could see the spirit of him as a warrior spirit who was born to die for causes and that he believed in.

[22:01] Tonya Pinkins: And so I was like, come on, who do you want to murder? Who the house? Come on, come on, come on.

[22:06] Ifetayo Harvey: And you know, once it was over, he was like, I don't like that. I don't ever want to do that again.

[22:11] Ifetayo Harvey: I didn't where did all that bitterness and murderous rage come from?

[22:13] Tonya Pinkins: I mean, I'm not gonna do that again if that's what's gonna happen.

[22:15] Ifetayo Harvey: And I'm like, the the mushrooms didn't do that to you. The mushrooms just got rid of all the mask that you cover it up with.

[22:22] Tonya Pinkins: Right.

[22:23] Ifetayo Harvey: So if you haven't dealt with all that murderous rage, it's gonna come up again until you process all of that.

[22:28] Tonya Pinkins: Exactly.

[22:29] Ifetayo Harvey: So back to you, and you were laughing and crying.

[22:32] Ifetayo Harvey: Yeah, yeah. So yeah, I was just laughing and crying, and then I the rest of my trip was pretty, pretty relaxing and just very light and fun.

[22:44] Ifetayo Harvey: I was expecting it to be more heavy than that, and I just after that one moment where I was crying, it was just I felt very light, and I I also felt like I was reminded why I'm alive because I saw all the plants and stuff breathing, and I was just seeing so much life around me.

[23:05] Ifetayo Harvey: I was like, wow, this is there is a reason to live. You know, there's so much beauty in the world, and I feel like when you are, you know, depressed or you know, dealing with other mental health challenges, you have like these glasses on that kind of make you see the world through like gray, you know, like there's a cloud over your head, like everywhere's cloudy and gray. And then when I took mushrooms, I felt like I was taking those off and seeing everything in like technicolor all of a sudden. And so it definitely it was like a boost, like a reset button was hit with me. And so that was my first mushroom journey. Um, and so I've you know, since then have journeyed and experimented with different doses.

I haven't really gone higher. No, no. Um, but that said, I've had some experiences where I've taken smaller doses, but the I guess the mushrooms are more potent. And it was the visuals I was getting was like crazy. And then I've also had instances where I've taken smaller doses, but I felt like the lessons that I was getting was more impactful.

[24:13] Tonya Pinkins: Tell me about some of the lessons you've gotten on your journeys.

[24:16] Ifetayo Harvey: Yeah, yeah. So most recently, um I had a I planned a retreat in New Mexico with um five other women, and we did this is my first time doing like mushrooms in a ceremony. Okay. So we did something called nine Cup Ceremony where we drank nine cups of mushroom tea. Okay. And so this was a a lighter dose than I was used to. I wasn't getting the visuals. Was there a curandera, a shaman leading it or were you leading it with the side?

[24:46] Ifetayo Harvey: I wasn't leading it. There was a woman, she's black American, she was leading it. Um, and she's just been learning from other uh shamans and curandera. So she's she's pretty young, but she's very, very good at holding the space. And so when I was on this trip, because it was such a light trip and I wasn't getting visuals, I started getting frustrated, and everyone else basically fell asleep. There was like three of us who kind of stayed awake, and three of us who fell asleep, and I had totally different expectations for the journey. I thought, you know, we were gonna be running around, just like looking at stuff and just you know, having an experience, and people we just fell asleep around the fire, and in a way it was really peaceful to watch.

But for me, I was getting frustrated because I'm like, why am I not feeling anything? Even though I was feeling, I was like processing a lot of grief in my life, like processing processing a lot of people who had died in recent years, and and that felt really good to just like let all that go. Um but then after a certain point I felt like they wore off, and so I was getting frustrated. So I go up to go up to um the woman who the ceremony leader, and I was like, Where are the mushrooms? I need more, and she's like, they're over there, and so I ate more, and my friend actually made a chocolate pyramid with mushrooms in it, and so we were melting that, and I was just eating more mushrooms because I was like, I need to feel something.

And then it started to hit me, and I I had kind of a revelation, and the message that I was getting was that you know, you don't need to have every lesson, doesn't need to be a hard one. And subtlety is sometimes its own teacher. So I kind of interpret it, interpreted that as meaning, you know, every mushroom trip you have doesn't have to be super intense and heavy and with all these visuals. And I was talking to my friend uh who was she was still up, and she was like, you know, sometimes the visuals, like all the hallucinations and things like that, are a distraction from what you really need to focus on. And that got me thinking about a lot of my trips in the past.

[27:01] Ifetayo Harvey: How you know I'm everyone's fascinated by the visuals of I don't get visuals.

[27:05] Tonya Pinkins: Oh, okay.

[27:07] Ifetayo Harvey: What? I don't have visuals.

[27:08] Tonya Pinkins: Oh my god, that's so that's so hard to believe.

[27:13] Ifetayo Harvey: Yeah, I don't have visuals.

[27:14] Tonya Pinkins: That's so interesting. It's so interesting hearing how different people are affected by mushrooms.

[27:18] Ifetayo Harvey: Yeah, I've heard people who are like, Oh, I take three and a half grams and nothing happened. And I'm I had that the first time I did it. I took four grams and nothing happened. Oh my god. And then the the first time I had something happen was uh I took nine grams. Oh my god. But then you know, it's from different people. So then I found someone who three and a half grams will will do it for me. But then Calindi talked about an excess dose, like no matter how much I've taken, I've never left the room that I'm in. You know, I'm I'm always in the room that I'm in, and wow, I'm having an experience, and I'm here. I have never gone to other places. Have you gone to other places?

[27:51] Ifetayo Harvey: Somewhat, somewhat. I would say yeah, somewhat. I I've definitely gotten feel like I've been transported sometimes, not for like the entire trip, but just for a brief moment. I remember one of my times I was um in my hometown of Charleston, South Carolina, and we were out on James Island, which is one of the sea islands, so we were watching the sunset on the marsh. This is after we ate three and a half grams, and I start seeing like King Tut and Nefertiti and all this like Egyptian imagery in the sun. And I was just like just like in like in a daze, like I could not stop staring at the sun. And I was just like, whoa, is this really happening? And then we walk back to the house, and everything is fine, but then I start feeling nauseous.

So I'm like, all right, guys, I I need to throw up. So I go to to vomit, and I start like hallucinating, looking at my vomit, and then I get like this vision of a woman, like in I guess it was Cuba. I don't know, that's what I'm guessing. But she was like wearing one of those like big flowy dresses, like, and I see other people with her, and they're like wearing red and white, and she's kind of laughing at me. She's like, ha ha, like I know you like sh she was like speaking Spanish, so I didn't know anything that she was saying, but the vibe that I got from her was like, oh, like you you feel sick now, but you'll be fine, ha ha ha, like you're good. And so that was kind of I was just like hugging the toilet bowl, smiling.

And I'm like, okay, this is this is good. I feel better now. And my friends were kind of worried, like, do you need some water? And I was like, no, I'm good, I'm good. Um, but I kind of took that, you know. Sometimes I wonder if that was like some of my ancestors because my great-grandma was born and raised in Cuba, and so I'm like, maybe it's some connection there, maybe it's just someone else, who who knows, you know. But that was one of my experiences with like being transported just to a totally different place, hearing the music and the drumming and the dancing, and seeing this woman who's like really vivacious and kind of just like laughing at me but like not in a mean way but just kind of like oh girl you'll be fine don't worry so I always have instances like that on my trip where I get a message from someone like you're gonna be okay don't worry so yeah it was making me thinking about you were speaking about the the traumas that you've experienced and one of the things they talk about in Indigenous focused oriented therapy that they don't think of anybody as being broken.

If you have survived a trauma you are considered someone who has indigenous wisdom and you are someone we have to learn from because you you survived it and you are here to tell the story and I often think about that about you know the peoples of color of the world the ones of us who were weak died. So the ones of us who are here we are the strong we survived it we have something in us to pass forward you know we know something about surviving trauma.

[30:54] Ifetayo Harvey: Oh definitely and especially us black folks you know I I study history in college and I grew up in Charleston where we still have plantations and stuff up and running and you know sometimes I really when I would be studying in college I would really try to place myself in the the shoes of my ancestors and I it was really hard for me because I was just like I cannot imagine I know the things that happened to them but I cannot physically put myself there in that in that time in that just in that mindset is just so I really think that you know we've we've only scratched the surface in terms of like our ancestor stories and how they resisted and survived so I'm I'm just always in awe of how you know how their sacrifices made it so that we're here today.

[31:52] Ifetayo Harvey: And I I feel one of those things for me one of my pet peeves. I have many pet things one of my pet peeves in the way we choose to tell the stories even in the way we as black people choose to tell the stories I am so sick of seeing slaves in these beautiful costumes in these beautiful cotton dresses. Cotton was king you was working to pick some damn cotton they was not dressing no slaves in no cotton dresses there was no dye. You was wearing burlap and potato sacks and you were half naked and you were barefoot and that's why he could rape you all the time because you was just walking around half naked and so that to me is part of the thing that makes it hard for us to know the truth of our story because they prettify it.

And it's like it doesn't even make conscious sense that you're gonna think that these people had on petticoats and things like that. No. Maybe when you were in the house and you had to serve people but no for the most part you were half dressed and they walked us across the country barefoot through snow as they you know moved us from Virginia into Texas and you know so I think that that is a a place of where we don't even realize just how much strength we had because they've covered over what the circumstances that we actually endured were.

[33:01] Tonya Pinkins: Mm-hmm. Yes I think it's so empowering for us to be able to talk to our elders and to read testimonials from folks who were enslaved. Um my mom has a book series called I I was a slave.

[33:16] Ifetayo Harvey: Your mother wrote it.

[33:17] Tonya Pinkins: Oh no, no, she has it at our house.

[33:19] Ifetayo Harvey: That's right.

[33:20] Tonya Pinkins: Okay. But um, it's it's testimonies written by black folks who were formerly enslaved, and it's really it's really powerful to read directly from that. It's also really powerful to hear, you know, from folks like my grandma who's 83, and I grew up with my great grandma, and she passed in 2009 at the age of 97. But even before she passed, she was like, Oh, yeah, my my grandfather was a white man. And we didn't really we knew that there was some white ancestry there because she was uh one of the few lighter skinned folks in my family. Um, but it was like also a surprise. So I I think there's a lot of power in being able to to share our ancestry stories and to talk to our elders and help keep their memory alive that way.

[34:08] Ifetayo Harvey: That was part one of my conversation with Ifetayo Harvey from the Drug Policy Network and People of Color Psychedelic Collective. Uh come back for part two.