Texas’s Hebbronville (AP) Like magic dumplings, the plump cactus in this area of southern Texas appear to emerge from cracked dirt and dry dust.
The bluish-green peyote plant grows natively only here and in northern Mexico, where it is tucked away among blackbrush, acacia, and prickly mesquite.
Many members of the Native American Church, who refer to this area as the “peyote gardens,” consider the plant to be sacred and an essential component of their rituals and prayers. Indigenous populations have relied on it as a natural healer to support their physical and emotional well-being while they have endured the trauma of colonization, displacement, and the loss of their culture, religion, and language.
Lack of access for religious use
The cactus is prized for its psychedelic qualities and contains a variety of psychotropic alkaloids, the main one being the hallucinogen mescaline. A 1994 modification to the American Indian Religious Freedom Act granted Native Americans the right to consume, acquire, and transport peyote for traditional religious purposes, despite the fact that it is a banned substance under federal law.
The lack of access to peyote, which they reverently refer to as the medicine, has been a concern for more than 20 years among Native American peyotism practitioners, who are estimated to number 400,000 in the United States. They claim that the slow-growing cactus, which takes 10 to 30 years to flower and mature, is being poached and overharvested, putting the species in risk and damaging its fragile ecosystem.
Members of the Native American Church claim that the situation has gotten worse as a result of calls from proponents of the psychedelic renaissance to decriminalize peyote and increase its accessibility for medical research and the treatment of a variety of illnesses. Experts claim that the habitat is also being harmed by nearby wind farms, housing developments, agriculture, and the border wall.
The overwhelming majority of peyote users concur that the plant ought to be protected and should be inaccessible to Silicon Valley capitalists, medical researchers, and other organizations that support criminalizing the drug. However, the Native American Church has differing views on how to achieve that objective.
Others in the church are more dubious of the intentions of investors, stating that they fear exploitation and would prefer to receive funding from the U.S. government to protect peyote. However, at least one group led by Native American Church leaders has started efforts to conserve and propagate peyote naturally in its habitat using philanthropic dollars.
Peyote embodies the Creator s spirit
Oglala Lakota Darrell Red Cloud recalls using peyote and singing ceremonial songs with his family at all-night peyote ceremonies when he was four years old. According to Red Cloud, Peyote has always been about connecting with the Creator. He serves as the Native American Church of North America’s vice president.
Although we were a devout nation, our people were not religious.
Former Navajo Nation vice president and Council of the Peyote Way of Life Coalition head Frank Dayish likened peyote to the Catholic Eucharist.
“My religion is peyote,” he declared. Prayers through that sacrament have been the foundation of my entire life.
Adrian Primeaux, who is Yankton Sioux and Apache, claims that he was told as a child of an Apache woman who fell behind her group during a forced relocation in the 1830s by the U.S. government because she was starved and dehydrated.
According to Primeaux, she was lying near the earth, ready to give up on life, when she heard a plant talking to her. “Eat me and you will be well,” the peyote was telling her.
According to Primeaux, she brought this herb back to the Apache medicine men and elders, who used it for prayer and meditation. He thinks that during that spiritual journey, the Native American Church and the future Peyote Way of Life were revealed.
According to Primeaux, who is descended from five generations of peyote people, peyote is more than just a therapeutic herb; it is also a spiritual compass and a north star. Despite their horrific past, the plant has served as a beacon of hope.
He claimed that it offered us hope and assisted us in processing our feelings, ideas, and life’s purpose.
An initiative to conserve and protect peyote
The Indigenous Peyote Conservation Initiative, or IPCI, is currently in charge of the 605 acres in Hebbronville, Texas, that the National Council of Native American Churches acquired in October 2017 to create a peyote preserve and spiritual homesite.
An IPCI board member and Navajo elder from Sweetwater, Arizona, Steven Benally, recalls his family’s yearly trips to the peyote gardens. Following the takeover by the peyotero system, when hundreds of button-like plant tops were gathered by government-licensed peyoteros and sold to Native American Church members, he remembers losing access to the gardens.
As a result, Native Americans could no longer openly enter privately owned ranches to gather peyote in prayer, as they had done for many years. According to Benally, they lost their holy bond with the earth.
Benally didn’t feel connected until he threw open the gate to their expansive ranch, which they lovingly call the 605. He put a sign that read, “This is real,” at the entrance since he was so overtaken with emotion.
He remarked, “It felt like we were finally living what we had just prayed for, dreamed about, and discussed.”
Visitors have left prayer notes, painted pebbles, and other offerings to a nearby cluster of naturally growing peyote on a hilltop bench, one of Benally’s favorite sites on the property. Benally sits on the seat, enjoying the silence and the soft breeze.
He stated, “We think that these plants, animals, and birds are just like us.” They are able to hear and comprehend. Like humans, they have their own location, their own powers, and a cause.
Miriam Volat, executive director of the NGO that manages the peyote preserve, described it as a conservation site where the plant is not harvested but rather propagated and replanted naturally in its habitat without the use of pesticides. According to her, Native Americans can camp at the preserve and harvest in prayer from friendly neighboring ranches if they can show their tribal identification cards.
Within the next fifty years, the goal is to restore peyote and its habitat so that it is plentiful in the area.
According to her, the U.S. Drug Enforcement Agency keeps a close eye on the peyote cultivated in their nursery. The organization, which has a license to operate, aims to strike a balance between being hospitable and meeting the agency’s demand that the facility be secured behind locked gates and under camera surveillance.
The debate over peyote conservation
Whether peyote should be produced outside of its natural habitat is a topic of debate among those working to protect it. Many members of the Native American Church argue that doing so would lessen the species’ sacredness, despite scientists and conservationists saying it is necessary for its protection.
In the 1970s, peyote grew in large quantities in the area, according to Keeper Trout, a research scientist and co-founder of the Cactus Conservation Institute in Texas. It has virtually vanished.
He compared it to walking on mattresses.
Trout feels that individuals should be allowed to grow and harvest anyplace, but he understands those who disagree on religious reasons. Trout is sure the hardy plant can make it through with a little assistance.
However, a lot of Native American churchgoers believe that the plant’s growing environment is important. The ceremonial protocols were bestowed by the Creator s grace and preserved through storytelling, said Hershel Clark, secretary for the Teesto chapter of the Azee Bee Nahagha of Din Nation in Arizona.
According to Clark, this is the reason we oppose greenhouses, cultivating it outside of its native habitat, and synthesizing it to manufacture pills.
Red Cloud worries that any modifications will undermine its holiness.
He claimed that after that, it simply turns into a drug that people rely on instead of a spiritual remedy.
It has also been difficult to finance conservation and preservation initiatives for peyote.
The Native American Church of North America is calling on the U.S government to uphold its obligation to protect and preserve peyote in its natural habitat in southern Texas, which includes financial incentives for landowners, said Red Cloud. His organization is asking for a $5 million federal grant to jumpstart such a program.
IPCI started with seed money from Riverstyx Foundation, which is run by Cody Swift, a psychotherapist and prominent supporter of psychedelic therapy research. The organization continues to seek philanthropic dollars to carry the conservation effort forward and is not opposed to receiving funding from the U.S. government, Volat said.
But, we re not waiting for it, she said.
There is suspicion and skepticism about Swift and other investors intentions in some corners of the Native American Church, Clark said. Swift has said in interviews that IPCI s goal is to preserve peyote in its natural habitat under the leadership and guidance of Native American peyote people, a stance Volat, his co-director at the foundation, also affirms.
Demand for peyote exceeds supply
According to Kevin Feeney, a senior social sciences lecturer at Central Washington University in Ellensburg, Washington, who has researched the commodification of peyote, there is no doubt that expanding the market for the drug will lead to a supply crisis and make it more accessible to those with the means.
Indigenous people would struggle to access their sacred plant while seeing others use it in a way they deem profane, he said.
Peyote supply remains limited for the Native American Church. Today, in southern Texas, only three licensed peyoteros are legally allowed to harvest the plant for sale to church members. Zulema Julie Morales, based in Rio Grande City, is one of them. She inherited the business from her father,Mauro Morales, who died two years ago.
She has been out in the fields since she was 10. Now 60, she says the peyote habitat is dwindling not because of peyoteros who harvest legally and ethically, but because of illegal poaching. She remembers her father gathering enough peyote to fill a dozen large trays while she can barely fill one.
Even though she is Mexican American and a Catholic, Morales, who charges 55 cents a button, considers it a privilege to provide peyote for ceremonial purposes. Her father, who customers called grandpa, hosted ceremonies for Native people every year and she has been a keen observer.
As Mexican Americans, we value our traditions, she said. This is their tradition and it s beautiful for us to be a part of that in our own way.
Teaching future generations
At IPCI, one of the main goals is to teach future generations the value of getting back to their ancestors spiritual and healing ways, saidSandor Iron Rope, an Oglala Lakota spiritual leader and president of the Native American Church of South Dakota. At least 200 people gathered on IPCI s grounds over Thanksgiving week, learning about peyote through panels, discussions, ceremony and prayer.
We ve put our moccasins and our footprints in this place, Iron Rope said. The hope is that these children, the next generation, will see the therapeutic value in getting rid of their phones and learning about what is right in front of them.
Iron Rope says this is how he is fulfilling his responsibility to future generations.
You can pray all you want, but you re going to have to meet the Creator halfway somewhere, he said. You re going to have to implement that prayer into action. And I see this as prayer in action.
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