scholarly journals Regulation of peyote (Lophophora williamsii: Cactaceae) in the U.S.A: A historical victory of religion and politics over science and medicine

2017 ◽  
Vol 11 (1) ◽  
pp. 147-156
Author(s):  
Martin Terry ◽  
Keeper Trout
Keyword(s):  
Native American ◽  
Native Americans ◽  
American Indian ◽  
Religion And Politics ◽  
Regulatory Requirements ◽  
Native American Church ◽  
Regulatory Status ◽  
The Usa ◽  
Bona Fide ◽  
Compare And Contrast

The peyote cactus, Lophophora williamsii, is presently classified as a Schedule 1 Controlled Substance in the USA, with an exemption for use as a sacrament in bona fide religious ceremonies of the Native American Church (NAC). Any botanist or other researcher seeking to work with peyote or any of its alkaloids, must com-ply with applicable (nontrivial) regulatory requirements. This paper presents an examination of the prohibition efforts that paved the way for current peyote regulation, accompanied by documentation of the religion-based political origins of such efforts, which involved the "acculturation" of Native Americans (i.e., the destruction of American Indian cultures). We also look at the historical emergence of a nationally organized and coordinated effort by missionaries and other prohibitionists to sell a federal anti-peyote law to Congress, which manifested itself repeatedly over a period of more than fifty years, before finally realizing success in the Controlled Substances Act of 1970. In view of ongoing changes in the legal/regulatory status of Cannabis sp. (another Schedule 1 plant that was targeted for illegality during the prohibitionists' rise to political predominance), we compare and contrast the two plants with speculation on peyote’s future.

scholarly journals The Cactus and the Anthropologist: The Evolution of Cultural Expertise on the Entheogenic Use of Peyote in the United States

Laws ◽  
2019 ◽  
Vol 8 (2) ◽  
pp. 12
Author(s):  
Aurelien Bouayad
Keyword(s):  
Native American ◽  
Native Americans ◽  
20Th Century ◽  
Legal System ◽  
Legal Protection ◽  
The United States ◽  
Native American Church ◽  
Two Generations ◽  
American Legal System ◽  
Cultural Experts

This paper explores the complex evolution of the role anthropologists have played as cultural experts in the regulation of the entheogenic use of the peyote cactus throughout the 20th century. As experts of the “peyote cult”, anthropologists provided testimonies and cultural expertise in the regulatory debates in American legislative and judiciary arenas in order to counterbalance the demonization and prohibition of the medicinal and sacramental use of peyote by Native Americans through state and federal legislations. In the meantime, anthropologists have encouraged Peyotists to form a pan-tribal religious institution as a way to secure legal protection of their practice; in 1918, the Native American Church (NAC) was incorporated in Oklahoma, with its articles explicitly referring to the sacramental use of peyote. Operating as cultural experts, anthropologists have therefore assisted jurists in their understanding of the cultural and religious significance of peyote, and have at the same time counseled Native Americans in their interaction with the legal system and in the formatting of their claims in appropriate legal terms. This complex legal controversy therefore provides ample material for a general exploration of the use, evolution, and impact of cultural expertise in the American legal system, and of the various forms this expertise can take, thereby contributing to the contemporary efforts at surveying and theorizing cultural expertise. Through an historical and descriptive approach, the analysis notably demonstrates that the role of anthropologists as cultural experts has been marked by a practical and substantive evolution throughout the 20th century, and should therefore not be restrictively understood in relation to expert witnessing before courts. Rather, this paper underlines the transformative and multifaceted nature of cultural expertise, and highlights the problematic duality of the position that the two “generations” of anthropologists involved in this controversy have experienced, navigating between a supposedly impartial position as experts, and an arguably biased engagement as advocates for Native American religious rights.

Circulating Silver

2019 ◽  
pp. 32-57
Author(s):  
Jenny Tone-Pah-Hote
Keyword(s):  
Native American ◽  
American Indian ◽  
Native People ◽  
Native American Church

Silversmiths made objects that were beautiful and that could render important symbols of the Native American Church. They communicated ideas and images that served as public representations of this religion as Native people exchanged these objects. The emergence and spread of Peyotism from the Kiowa, Comanche, and Apache reservation began to generate new Kiowa and American Indian identities. The jewellery and emerging identities parallel one another. Kiowas and others communicated these changes through painting, photography, clothing, and through jewellery itself.

scholarly journals The Case for a Native American 1968 and Its Transnational Legacy

2019 ◽  
Vol 12 (2) ◽  
pp. 49-70
Author(s):  
György Tóth
Keyword(s):  
Social Movements ◽  
Native American ◽  
Cold War ◽  
Native Americans ◽  
American Indian ◽  
American Indians ◽  
The Us ◽  
Native American Activism ◽  
The 1960S ◽  
The Cold War

Partly as a result of compartmentalized academic specializations and history teaching, in accounts of the global upheavals of 1968, Native Americans are either not mentioned, or at best are tagged on as an afterthought. “Was there a Native American 1968?” is the central question this article aims to answer. Native American activism in the 1960s was no less flashy, dramatic or confrontational than the protests by the era’s other struggles – it is simply overshadowed by later actions of the movement. Using approaches from Transnational American Studies and the history of social movements, this article argues that American Indians had a “long 1968” that originated in Native America’s responses to the US government’s Termination policy in the 1950s, and stretched from their ‘training’ period in the 1960s, through their dramatic protests from the late 1960s through the 1970s, all the way to their participation at the United Nations from 1977 through the rest of the Cold War. While their radicalism and protest strategies made Native American activism a part of the US domestic social movements of the long 1960s, the nature of American Indian sovereignty rights and transnationalism place the Native American long 1968 on the rights spectrum further away from civil rights, and closer to a national liberation struggle—which links American Indian activism to the decolonization movements of the Cold War.

1964

Peyote Effect ◽  
2018 ◽  
pp. 103-120
Author(s):  
Alexander S. Dawson
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Native American ◽  
First Amendment ◽  
The United States ◽  
Federal Law ◽  
Native American Church ◽  
Bona Fide ◽  
Federal Laws ◽  
The 1960S ◽  
The U.S

As the United States moved toward a ban on peyote during the 1960s, the courts were forced to confront the First Amendment claims of Native American peyotists. This chapter explores the deployment of the concept of “bona fide” religious belief, which became the means through which an exemption for Native American peyotists was enshrined in U.S. law. The courts attempted to measure this through a series of metrics: whether or not other drugs were used, whether or not ceremonies took place within a formally organized church, and the extent to which these practices could be said to be traditional. More troubling was the fact that the courts and later the U.S. government relied on race as a basis for evaluating these claims, particularly after the Native American Church exemption was enshrined in federal laws that made peyote a schedule-one drug. Federal law made exceptions for the Native American Church only so long as those enjoying the exemption were also at least one-quarter Indian by blood. We see here, then, the role that the state’s obsession with race played in ensuring that Native American Church chapters became exclusively indigenous churches, reshaping the Native American Church in the process.

Through native eyes: American Indians write about their art

1992 ◽  
Vol 17 (4) ◽  
pp. 5-12
Author(s):  
Mary B. Davis
Keyword(s):  
Native American ◽  
Native Americans ◽  
American Indian ◽  
20Th Century ◽  
American Indians ◽  
American Art ◽  
Native American Art ◽  
Art Historians ◽  
The Subject ◽  
Easel Painting

During the 20th century, and particularly since its adoption of easel painting, the continuing development of American Indian art has resisted attempts to contain and circumscribe it within definitions and categories imposed by outsiders — art critics, art historians, and the authors of many of the most readily available books on the subject. Native Americans are determined not only to remain in control of their art but also to have a say in how it is interpreted. A bibliography of sources follows an introductory survey of Native American statements about Native American art.

Cultural Hybridity in the USA exemplified by Tex-Mex cuisine

2017 ◽  
Vol 7 (2) ◽  
pp. 90-98
Author(s):  
Małgorzata Martynuska
Keyword(s):  
Native American ◽  
Native Americans ◽  
American Culture ◽  
Cultural Exchange ◽  
Cultural Hybridity ◽  
Family Presence ◽  
The Usa ◽  
History Of ◽  
The U.S

AbstractThe article concerns the hybrid phenomenon of Tex-Mex cuisine which evolved in the U.S.-Mexico borderland. The history of the U.S.-Mexican border area makes it one of the world’s great culinary regions where different migrations have created an area of rich cultural exchange between Native Americans and Spanish, and then Mexicans and Anglos. The term ‘Tex-Mex’ was previously used to describe anything that was half-Texan and half-Mexican and implied a long-term family presence within the current boundaries of Texas. Nowadays, the term designates the Texan variety of something Mexican; it can apply to music, fashion, language or cuisine. Tex-Mex foods are Americanised versions of Mexican cuisine describing a spicy combination of Spanish, Mexican and Native American cuisines that are mixed together and adapted to American tastes. Tex-Mex cuisine is an example of Mexicanidad that has entered American culture and is continually evolving.

Research Note: The Emergence of American Indian Enterprise

1992 ◽  
Vol 5 (4) ◽  
pp. 413-416 ◽  
Author(s):  
Steven L. A. Stallings
Keyword(s):  
Economic Development ◽  
Native American ◽  
Native Americans ◽  
American Indian ◽  
Research Note ◽  
American Population ◽  
Native American Population ◽  
Economic Independence ◽  
Early Stages ◽  
Family Enterprise

We are in the early stages of what may become a dramatic transformation in economic development among Native Americans. Tribal enterprises, individual entrepreneurs, and reservation economic development corporations are beginning to attract and generate new capital and to offer hope of greater economic independence and prosperity for this sector of our society. This note presents an introduction to the characteristics of entrepreneurship and family enterprise in the Native American population.

From Powwow to Stomp Dance

2013 ◽  
Author(s):  
Paula J. Conlon
Keyword(s):  
Native American ◽  
Cultural Heritage ◽  
American Indian ◽  
19Th Century ◽  
Indian Territory ◽  
Cultural Contexts ◽  
Native Identity ◽  
Indian Tribes ◽  
The 19Th Century ◽  
Compare And Contrast

Oklahoma is home to 67 American Indian tribes, each of which has its own cultural heritage. The result is a wealth of parallel traditions, from powwows deriving from Plains warrior societies to stomp dances of Woodland tribes that were forcibly removed to Indian Territory (present Oklahoma) in the 19th century. Song and dance around the powwow drum contrast sharply with the stomp dance tradition, where all-night singing and dancing around a sacred fire, accompanied by the percussion of the female dancers wearing turtle or can rattles strapped around their lower legs, form the backbone of the Green Corn religion. This chapter will compare and contrast the powwow and the stomp dance in their historical cultural contexts as symbols of Native identity, and examine how these parallel dance traditions continue to reinforce a sense of ethnic pride for Native American communities in Oklahoma.

Offensiveness of Native American Names, Mascots, and Logos in Sports: A Survey of Tribal Leaders and the General Population

2009 ◽  
Vol 2 (1) ◽  
pp. 81-99 ◽  
Author(s):  
Fraser Laveay ◽  
Coy Callison ◽  
Ann Rodriguez
Keyword(s):  
Native American ◽  
Native Americans ◽  
American Indian ◽  
American Indians ◽  
Media Coverage ◽  
Past Research ◽  
Party Affiliation ◽  
Sports Teams ◽  
National Congress ◽  
Political Party Affiliation

The pervasiveness of media coverage of sports teams with American Indian names and imagery has arguably supported stereotypical beliefs of those referenced. Past research investigating opinions on sports teams using American Indian themes has been inconsistent in findings and drawn criticism for lacking valid samples of Native Americans. Through a survey of National Congress of American Indians leaders (n = 208) and random U.S. adults (n = 484), results reveal that Native Americans are more offended by sports teams employing American Indian imagery, as well as more supportive of change, than is the general public. Investigation of how demographic characteristics influenced perceptions show that although age and education level have little influence, political party affiliation does correlate with opinions, with those voting Democrat viewing the teams with American Indian names, logos, and mascots as most offensive and in need of change.

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