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  • The Peyote Road: Religious Freedom and the Native American Church by Thomas C. Maroukis
  • William M. Clements
The Peyote Road: Religious Freedom and the Native American Church. By Thomas C. Maroukis. Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 2012. Pp. 296. Illustrations, map, notes, bibliography, index.)

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This comprehensive treatment of Peyotism in the United States has value for both specialists in American Indian religions and generalists. For the former it offers up-to-date (as of 2010, when the hardcover edition of the book came out) information on the legal status of ritual Peyote use and on statutory problems that Peyotists continue to face. The author also stresses an insider’s approach to Peyotism, especially through interviews with participants in the protocols of the Native American Church. For generalists the book provides a readable account that treats the history of Peyotism, the ritual process involving its ingestion, the theology that undergirds this religion, the art and music that have emerged from it, and the issues that Peyotists confront in their relations with other American Indian religions and federal, state, and local governments.

Thomas C. Maroukis downplays the visionary aspects of Peyote, which contains only a small amount of the hallucinogen mescaline. Instead, he stresses belief in Peyote’s healing qualities, perceptions that Peyotism constitutes an indigenous American religion, and the ethical system that emerges from participation in the rituals associated with the Native American Church as reasons for the religion’s spread throughout the United States and Canada during the twentieth century in spite of active opposition from several quarters. Although some Peyotists attempted to counter that opposition by conducting their rituals clandestinely, Maroukis argues that the most effective method for dealing with opposition from traditionalists, Christian missionaries, the Bureau of Indian Affairs and other agencies of the federal government, and various state and tribal governments was [End Page 335] through incorporation. Hence, the Native American Church emerged in Oklahoma in 1918 to provide a foundation for protecting the ritual use of Peyote as a First Amendment right. That Oklahoma organization afforded a model for other entities. Currently, four major Peyotist groups co-exist in the United States. Their local affiliates generally subscribe either to the Half Moon Way, which derives in large part from practices among the Comanches and other communities on the southern Plains, or to the Cross Fire Way, which incorporates Christian doctrine and imagery. Some independent Peyote groups also exist. Maroukis notes that relying solely on the First Amendment for protecting Peyotism has not always been effective and that legal concerns have sometimes also cited the distinctive trust relationships between Native nations and the United States.

As site of the “Peyote gardens,” the only place in the United States where Peyote grows wild, Texas has played an important role in the history of Peyotism. Since the beginning of the twentieth century, harvesting there by Peyoteros helped to supply ritual needs for the entire country as well as Canada. Nowadays, though, shrinkage of the ecosystem that supports Lophophora williamsii and overharvesting, especially as Peyotism has spread through Native communities and generated interest among non-Indians who are attracted by the cactus’s alleged psychedelic qualities, have created a potential shortage which has inflated prices considerably. Concerns about supply join legal anxiety as the major problems confronting the continued thriving of Peyotism.

Maroukis provides detailed treatment of these concerns while...

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