Peyote, a cactus that contains mescaline, a hallucinogen, grows naturally in South Texas and northern Mexico.
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Miriam Volat, executive director of the Indigenous Peyote Conservation Initiative and co-director of The River Styx Foundation, examines young peyote plants in the nursery at IPCI in Hebbronville, Texas, Sunday, March 24, 2024. Peyote growing in the wild on the 605 acres of land run by the Indigenous Peyote Conservation Initiative, which is led by several members of the Native American Church, in Hebbronville, Texas, Tuesday, March 26, 2024.
The offering garden at the Indigenous Peyote Conservation Initiative homesite, in Hebbronville, Texas, Tuesday, March 26, 2024. For over two decades, Native American practitioners of peyotism, whose numbers in the U.S. are estimated at 400,000, have raised the alarm about lack of access to peyote, which they reverently call “the medicine.” They say poaching and excessive harvesting of the slow-growing cactus, which flowers and matures over 10 to 30 years, are endangering the species and ruining its delicate habitat.
“She was about to give up on life as she lay close to the Earth when she heard a plant speaking to her," Primeaux said."The peyote was telling her: Eat me and you will be well.” Steven Benally, a Navajo elder from Sweetwater, Arizona, and an IPCI board member, remembers his annual pilgrimages to the peyote gardens with his family. He recalls losing access to the gardens after the “peyotero” system took over, whereThis meant that Native American people could not freely go onto privately owned ranches and prayerfully harvest peyote as they had done for generations. They lost their sacred connection with the land, Benally said.
The goal is to restore peyote and its habitat, making it abundant in the region within the next 50 years. “This is why we don’t support greenhouses, growing it outside its natural habitat or synthesizing it to make pills," Clark said.“Then, it just becomes a drug that people depend on rather than a spiritual medicine,” he said.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.
Miriam Volat Adrian Primeaux Religion Kevin Feeney Frank Dayish Mauro Morales Steven Benally U.S. News
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