A Culture's Catalyst : Historical Encounters with Peyote and the Native American Church in Canada

"In 1956, pioneering psychedelic researchers Abram Hoffer and Humphry Osmond were invited to join members of the Red Pheasant First Nation near North Battleford, Saskatchewan, to participate in a peyote ceremony hosted by the Native American Church of Canada. Inspired by their experience, they wrote a series of essays explaining and defending the consumption of peyote and the practice of peyotism. They enlisted the help of Hoffer's sister, journalist Fannie Kahan, and worked closely with her to document the religious ceremony and write a history of peyote, culminating in a defense of its use as a healing and spiritual agent. Although the text shows its mid-century origins, with dated language and at times uncritical analysis, it advocates for Indigenous legal, political and religious rights and offers important insights into how psychedelic researchers, who were themselves embattled in debates over the value of spirituality in medicine, interpreted the peyote ceremony. Ultimately, they championed peyotism as a spiritual practice that they believed held distinct cultural benefits. A Culture's Catalyst revives a historical debate. Revisiting it now encourages us to reconsider how peyote has been understood and how its appearance in the 1950s tested Native-newcomer relations and the Canadian government's attitudes toward Indigenous religious and cultural practices."-- Provided by publisher Cover......Page 1 Contents......Page 6 List of Illustrations......Page 7 Acknowledgements......Page 8 Introduction......Page 10 Photographs......Page 36 Editor's Note......Page 42 A Culture's Catalyst (1963)......Page 44 Chapter 1. Peyote—A Culture’s Catalyst (Fannie Kahan)......Page 46 Chapter 2. The Great Bastian (Fannie Kahan)......Page 51 Chapter 3. The Struggle for Peyote (Fannie Kahan)......Page 67 Chapter 4. The Spiritual Herb (Fannie Kahan)......Page 93 Chapter 5. Night in the Tipi (Humphry Osmond)......Page 110 Chapter 6. The Psychedelic Experience in the Native American Church (Duncan Blewett)......Page 127 Chapter 7. Peyote Ceremony and Jungian Archetypes (Teodoro Weckowicz)......Page 139 Chapter 8. Peyote: A Sacrament by Medical Prescription (Abram Hoffer and Humphry Osmond)......Page 150 Notes......Page 156 Bibliography......Page 168 Index......Page 170