Peyote: History, Tradition, Politics, and Conservation by

Peyote: History, Tradition, Politics, and Conservation by

Language: eng
Format: azw3
Publisher: ABC-CLIO
Published: 2016-01-30T16:00:00+00:00


7

Protecting the Peyote for Future Generations: Building on a Legacy of Perseverance

Bob Prue

I am a member of the Rosebud Sioux tribe of Indians of South Dakota; we call ourselves the Sicangu Lakota, and I am a resident of that seemingly parallel universe called “Indian Country.” It is from the standpoint of Indian country that I try to write about concerns related to our peoples. I came to write about peyote somewhat by accident. I had known about peyote since childhood. My older brother had received a stern rebuke from our father when it was discovered he had used peyote recreationally with a group of his non-Indian friends. “That is Indian medicine,” said my father, “you don’t want to fool around with it that way.” “That way,” of course, was recreationally. Our family had no connection to the Native American Church (NAC), but the knowledge that peyote was powerful and sacred was nonetheless palpable. Later, a group of Indian friends invited me to attend a peyote service that was being held adjacent to a social gathering. I declined, feeling as if the medicine deserved a more heartfelt approach than this casual encounter would have offered. Again, much later, a colleague to whom I had provided clinical supervision invited me to attend his Thanksgiving celebration, which was to be held at a peyote meeting.

It was only later, as an academic pursuing my doctorate in social work, that my research led me to a more intimate understanding of the role of peyote in the NAC. Two years of participant observation help me to understand how the vast and supportive network of the NAC served to support sobriety as much as or more than any biochemical or spiritual phenomenon occurring with peyote (Prue, 2008). However, writing about peyote can be challenging. Foley (2003) has lamented the frustration of indigenous scholars as they approach a Western-dominated academy when they themselves write on topics intimately familiar to them. Out of that frustration, Foley advocates for an Indigenous Standpoint, which recognizes that indigenous people approach knowledge generation in their own way. Furthermore, we often have different agendas from those of our Western-oriented colleagues. We often are accused of being oppositional, political, radical, or emotional (Mihesuah, 1998), which is understandable considering the history of Western European and indigenous peoples.



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