Compost the Empire

The Silenced Harm of Colonial Psychedelia | Ifetayo Harvey

The episode features a conversation with Ifetayo Harvey, founder of the People of Color Psychedelic Collective, discussing the impact of white supremacy in mainstream psychedelia and the creation of a platform for candid discussions on race and psychedelics. The conversation delves into the complexities of working in the psychedelic field, addressing issues of trust, discernment, and the impact on people of color. It also explores the concept of psychedelic exceptionalism and its implications, as well as the war on drugs and its intersection with systemic oppression and social justice. Takeaways * Psychedelic exceptionalism and foreign policing * Impact of white supremacy in mainstream psychedelia Trust and discernment are crucial in navigating the complexities of the psychedelic field. * Psychedelic exceptionalism and the war on drugs intersect with systemic oppression and social justice. Chapters * 00:00 Opening and Gratitude * 05:24 First Experience with Psychedelics * 12:52 Impact of Healthcare System * 25:10 Building Community and Infrastructure * 32:38 Navigating Trust and Discernment in the Psychedelic Field * 39:16 Connecting Psychedelic Exceptionalism to Systemic Issues and Policy * 56:40 Building Hope and Community through Action

The Condition of Peyote & the Harm of the ICPI

JOHNNY JOHNSON — PEYOTE, CLASSICAL EDUCATION, AND THE SPIRITUAL CRISIS OF COLONIAL PSYCHEDELIA In this deeply moving episode, we sit down with Johnny Johnson, a member of the Diné (Navajo) Nation and a Native American Church road man — or as he reframes it, a life coach — who has been walking this path since 1990. Johnny shares the sacred significance of peyote within his culture, his rude awakening to the billion-dollar psychedelic industry at the 2023 Denver psychedelic conference, and the urgent threats facing peyote through over-harvesting, land grabs, and commodification by what we call colonial psychedelia. Drawing on Socrates, Kierkegaard, and the foundational teachings of the Four Cardinal Directions, Johnny makes a compelling case that we are living in a state of spiritual desolation — and that no amount of psychedelics can fix what a lack of ethical foundation and classical education has broken. This conversation is a wake-up call for anyone in the psychedelic space, in education, and anyone walking the path of self-understanding. WHAT WE COVER: — Johnny's 35-year journey as a Diné road man and life coach, and his work in beauty way teachings, protection way teachings, and classical education — The sacred significance of peyote to the Diné: not a "psychedelic" but simply "the medicine working on you" — Johnny's shock at discovering the global psychedelic industry (projected at $11.1B) at the 2023 Denver conference — and how peyote is hidden under the name "mescaline" — The ceremonial foundation nobody talks about: the Four Cardinal Directions, stepping from the business world into a world of ideas, and Kierkegaard's three levels of existence — The threats to peyote: wealthy outsiders buying land, non-Natives establishing their own peyote religions, over-harvesting in Texas and Mexico, and peyote products already being manufactured abroad — Why peyote could be declared an endangered species within our generation — and what that means for communities that survived genocide — Johnny's message to the colonial psychedelic world: "We live in an age where ideas are cheapened" — the choice between commodifying sacred medicine or preserving it for spiritual understanding across generations — The crisis in education: how the absence of philosophy, ethical literacy, and moral education is producing what Johnny calls "cyclops" — career-driven but spiritually hollow people — Vision 2075: Johnny's call for a containment policy to protect peyote and these ways of life for the next 50 years — Our closing reflections on the cosmology of separability, spiritual desolation, critical pedagogy, and why psychedelics without deep ethical and spiritual grounding is a bandaid, not a cure KEY QUOTES: "The unexamined life is not worth living... if you don't cultivate your perspective, a person can waste their entire life." "When a person steps into ceremony, they're stepping from a business world into a world of ideas." "Temptation resisted is a true measure of character." BOOK MENTIONED: Hospice Modernity by Vanessa Machado de Oliveira — a must-read on the cosmology of separability and the foundations of Western civilization's self-destruction. Guest: Johnny Johnson | Diné (Navajo) Nation | Native American Church Road Man & Life Coach | Classical Education Advocate #Peyote #NavajoNation #Diné #NativeAmericanChurch #ColonialPsychedelia #PsychedelicIndustry #ClassicalEducation #Decolonization #IndigenousRights #Kierkegaard #Socrates #EthicalLiteracy #PeyoteConservation #SpiritualDesolation #CompostTheEmpire

Decolonizing the Self | Evita Sawyers

In this episode of Compost the Empire, Ethos and Logina are joined by Black queer ethical non-monogamy coach, speaker, and author Evita “LaVita Loca” Sawyers to explore what it actually means to decolonize identity, attachment, and love in real life, not just in theory. We move from big language about “decolonization” down into the body: nervous systems shaped by empire, internal surveillance, and the schisms we create to survive. Together, we ask what it means to be indigenous to ourselves and how polyamory can act like an “operating system update” for how we do connection, community, and care. Evita shares from her lived experience as a polyamory educator, parent, and survivor, weaving in how race, class, disability, and housing insecurity shape access to love, village, and long-term support — and why we need to stop treating romantic partnership as the only place where “doing life together” is allowed. ---------------------------------------- In this episode, we explore: * Compassion as a core decolonial practice when none of us were taught how to do this well * Polyamory as an “OS update” from monogamy, and why it’s really just complex human relating on steroids * Intersectionality and why every layer of identity informs how we give and receive love * Romantic relationships as sites of literal survival (housing, money, care) under capitalism * Reimagining village, queer kinship networks, and “people to do life with” beyond couples * Conflict, rupture, and repair without carceral logics or sitcom timelines * Trauma, somatics, and the questions Evita uses with clients: “Where are you right now?” and “What did you hear me say?” * Making friends with the ego as a safety tool, instead of waging war on ourselves * Love as praxis: the ongoing choice to stay, pause, repair, or lovingly part ways ---------------------------------------- A question from Evita to carry with you: > How am I being indigenous to myself? > What feels native, honest, and at home in my body and identity — beyond performance or pressure from any side? ---------------------------------------- ABOUT EVITA “LAVITA LOCA” SAWYERS Evita is a Black queer ethical non-monogamy coach, speaker, educator, and author known for her frank, emotionally honest approach to polyamory. She appeared in the documentary Poly Love, created the daily reflection project Today’s Polyamory Reminder, and wrote A Polyamory Devotional: 365 Daily Reflections for the Consensually Non-Monogamous. Her work supports people opening up from monogamy, working with jealousy, and learning to communicate complex emotions with clarity and compassion. (Add Evita’s website / socials / book links here.) ---------------------------------------- WORKSHOP INVITATION This conversation opens the portal for our upcoming workshop with Evita and Logina: Decolonizing Identity: From Internalized Surveillance to Relational Truth 📅 February 1 🔗 Register: bit.ly/NeuroColonization101 [http://bit.ly/NeuroColonization101] ---------------------------------------- SUPPORT THE ECOSYSTEM If this episode gave you language, resonance, or a place to breathe, consider supporting Compost the Empire through our Substack. Think of it less as a subscription and more as mycelial economics — small, distributed support that lets this body of work grow without being distorted. We’re also open to sponsorships from brands, collectives, and organizations rooted in care, repair, dignity, and relationship (not extraction or greenwashing). If that’s you, reach out via the contact info in the show notes.

Why Neurocolonization: A Survivor’s Path to Somatic Liberation

Why Neurocolonization: A Survivor’s Path to Somatic Liberation In this solo reflection, Ethos speaks candidly about why the Neurocolonization work exists—and why sharing it publicly has been both a resistance and a responsibility. Rooted in ancestral memory, somatic abolition, and lived experience, this episode traces the journey from activism to liberation, from community betrayal to earth-based belonging, and from disembodiment to metabolic healing. Ethos reflects on surviving state repression, community exile, complex PTSD, and suicidal ideation—and how those ruptures clarified a deeper devotion to healing that is not performative, extractive, or rooted in spiritual capitalism. Neurocolonization is named here not as a theory, but as a felt operating system—one that conditions our nervous systems to recapitulate empire, even in movements claiming liberation. Through yoga, meditation, indigenous medicine, sweat, movement, and deep somatic listening, Ethos explores what it means to decolonize not just beliefs, but bodies, relationships, and metabolic rhythms. This episode also situates Neurocolonization 101 as an invitation into a collective process—what Ethos calls a liberation university—where no one is positioned as guru or guide. Instead, the work is shared from the perspective of a survivor, alongside others willing to feel, metabolize, and imagine together in a time of global rupture. Drawing connections between intergenerational trauma, epigenetics, and collective harm, the conversation engages insights aligned with thinkers such as Resmaa Menakem, Assata Shakur, Simone de Beauvoir, and Jean-Paul Sartre, while grounding everything in lived, embodied practice rather than abstraction. This is an episode about: * Why healing is inseparable from liberation * How trauma is metabolized—or weaponized—through the nervous system * Why identity politics alone cannot undo empire * The myth that spiritual healing is only for the wealthy * What it means to choose hope, imagination, and community in an era of genocide, fascism, and collapse Ethos closes with an invitation—to those willing to feel again, to confront their complicity without shame, and to co-create spaces where grief, rage, movement, and possibility can be metabolized together. ---------------------------------------- INVITATION & CALLS TO ACTION * Join Neurocolonization 101, a somatic workshop series exploring liberation beyond activism * Comment “resonate” to receive information about upcoming sessions * Subscribe to the Substack for 20% off the workshop series * Stay tuned for the launch of The Feel Tanks—collective spaces for somatic processing and co-regulation * Come build the world beyond empire, together If you’re ready to be the generation that ends empire—this is your invitation.

Ethos's Story: The Alchemy of Rupture

In this opening episode, Ethos shares their personal story as a trans-masculine, non-binary person raised in Mormonism, shaped by colonial cosmologies of separability, and transformed through education, somatic practice, relational inquiry, and lived experience inside the collapse of empire. Tracing a journey from early gendered misrecognition, chronic depression, and survival through structure, to the liberatory impact of dialogical education and somatic healing, this episode introduces the foundational questions that guide Compost the Empire: How does modernity shape our nervous systems, our relationships, and our sense of self? What happens when rupture is no longer moralized as “good” or “bad,” but understood as a portal for repair, accountability, and post-traumatic growth? Ethos introduces the conceptual map behind their work—drawing inspiration from decolonial thinkers such as Vanessa Machado de Oliveira—including the four core needs of being alive, the wounds produced by separability, neurocolonization as an operating system of empire, and the distinction between conflict cycles, collapse, repair, and trust-building. This episode is not a manifesto or a prescription. It is an offering—a story shared as an invitation into deeper relational integrity, somatic accountability, and collective remembering. A doorway into the ongoing exploration known as The Alchemy of Rupture. Listen if you’re curious about decolonization beyond ideology, healing beyond bypass, and what it might mean to live in right relation with yourself, others, and the living world.