On Label
My written piece, “On Label”, uses storytelling to examine tensions and dichotomies. I wasn’t able to choose which presentations I wanted to take in so ended up watching or participating in 13 different workshops, presentations and keynotes. The piece uses fragments that tie in drug user agency, psychedelic healing, decolonization, neurodivergence, language barriers and art/science/academic elitism. The piece itself dancing between personal narrative, journalistic reporting and editorial candor presents itself as an organism, complex and multifaceted. In this way, it represents the summit, its participants, and our movements. I am grateful especially to the Indigenous and racialized presenters (namely Jack Saddleback, jaye simpson, Kai Cheng Thom and Rinaldo Wallcott) for not only bringing their perspectives and brilliance to the space, but also in their delivery, each in their own right, challenging the frameworks and demonstrating visionary alternatives to the colonial assignments’ expectations. This piece explores the assigned, criminalized, pathologized, and expected in tension and contrast with the ancient, transcendent, pleasure driven, interconnected, and liberatory.
Kori Doty is a non-binary, trans, neurodivergent community educator based on Lekwungan Territory in the home of the Equimalt, Songhees and WSANEC first nations. Their biological ancestry is primarily made up of working class Northern European settlers and they also claim cultural lineage of psychedelics pioneers and queer rebels. They write things on the internet (and have since Geocities) as well as occasionally for longer slower formats, like the anthology they co-edited which has finally made it to print. They specialize in gender and sexuality, harm reduction and psychedelics, and have been guiding conversations on these topics as a volunteer and staff of many ASOs and community based agencies over the last 13 years. These days they are just starting to come out of the all consuming project that was raising their daughter to be school aged- and now with the spaciousness of kindergarten, returning to ‘public life’. They are also training in somatic sex education. You can find them at koridoty.com, subscribe to their Patreon at patreon.com/koridoty.