Indigenous Religious Traditions in Five Minutes - Molly Bassett

Indigenous Religious Traditions in Five Minutes - Molly Bassett

58. Is Peyote a medicine or a drug?

Indigenous Religious Traditions in Five Minutes - Molly Bassett

Jennifer Graber [+-]
University of Texas in Austin
Jennifer Graber is the Shive, Lindsay, and Gray Professor in the History of Christianity and the Associate Director of the Native American and Indigenous Studies Program at the University of Texas in Austin. Her first book, The Furnace of Affliction: Prisons and Religion in Antebellum America, explores the intersection of church and state during the founding of the nation's first prisons. Her latest book, The Gods of Indian Country: Religion and the Struggle for the American West, considers religious transformations among Kiowa Indians and Anglo Americans during their conflict over Indian Territory, or what is now known as Oklahoma.

Description

According to some Indigenous peoples, non-human powers offered humans the peyote cactus as a medicine. But most non-Indigenous peoples think peyote’s psychoactive alkaloids demand its regulation as a dangerous drug. Indigenous practitioners of ritual peyote ingestion have struggled against this view since the earliest colonial encounters. They affirm, instead, that communal peyote rites heal both body and spirit.

Notify A Colleague

Citation

Graber, Jennifer. 58. Is Peyote a medicine or a drug?. Indigenous Religious Traditions in Five Minutes. Equinox eBooks Publishing, United Kingdom. p. 184-186 Sep 2022. ISBN 9781800502031. https://www.equinoxpub.com/home/view-chapter/?id=43173. Date accessed: 28 Mar 2024 doi: 10.1558/equinox.43173. Sep 2022

Dublin Core Metadata