A Culture's Catalyst: Historical Encounters with Peyote and the Native American Church of Canada by Fannie Kahan (review)

Fannie Kahan's (1923–1978) text, completed in 1963, offers a historical glimpse into the debate over the legal use of peyote in Canada and the United States (with the focus on Canada), and the debate over the use of psychedelic substances in mental health. Kahan, a journalist, wrote six books and served as editor of the Winnipeg Free Press, Journal of Ortho-molecular Psychiatry and the Huxley Institute Newsletter. Throughout her career, her focus was on schizophrenia and alcoholism and the use of psychotropic healing. This led her and her colleagues to study peyote and Peyotism. The book includes an introduction, main text by Kahan and invited essays by four psychiatrists who were experimenting with the use of psychedelic drugs. Kahan sought support to have peyote decriminalized and protected by Canadian law. She also hoped to influence public opinion, which had negative views about peyote.

In 1956 when the Canadian government criminalized peyote use and possession, the Red Pheasant First Nation sought help. The president of the Native American Church of North America, Frank Takes Gun, went to Winnipeg to help the Native American Church of Canada (nacc). They invited a group of non-Indigenous psychiatrists and two journalists to attend one of their dusk to dawn services.

Kahan did not attend the service, but wrote the main text based on their experience and her research into Peyotism. She summarized the anti-peyote crusade and refuted it point by point. She argued that peyote was not harmful nor habit forming, as it was used as a sacrament in a bona fide religion. She quotes a long list of anthropologists who also defended Peyotism. With advocacy in mind, she focused on the Christian elements in Peyotism clearly hoping to convince the legislature of its religious nature. She called it a "formalized Christian religion in Indian form" (51). She also explained the spread of Peyotism as emerging amongst people living in poverty and squalour. This is overstated, as many Peyotists, especially Comanche and Osage, would not fit this categorization.

As an advocacy text it is convincing. Its goal was to convince the government to cease its attempts to control Indigenous cultural practices. It also shows how a group of psychiatrists hoped to use a positive image of peyote usage to strengthen their case for the use of psychotropic drugs for mental health problems.

The four psychiatrists and two journalists invited to attend the peyote service took notes, used a tape recorder and took photos. Kahan points out that all "the White Christians [were] asleep" at some point during the service, probably not appreciated by the hosts. Kahan later invited each to write an essay on their experience. They all review the assaults on Peyotism, then refute them by extolling the benefits of the Peyote faith. They all made extensive analyses of the ritual, a difficult task based on a single experience.

Humphrey Osman, an early experimenter on lsd, is known for coining the term "psychedelic." He was the only visitor who ingested peyote. He summarized the service but added much hyperbole in his commentary. For example, he described the drumming: "it was fecund pulsing of sex, passion, generation and death" (77). Not an interpretation that any Peyotist would render.

Duncan Blewett, a clinical psychologist, was an advocate of lsd as a mental health curative. He concluded that the peyote experience was not different from the mescaline, lsd experience (99). Peyotists would cringe at this commentary.

Teodoro Weckowicz's essay on peyote and Jungian (Carl Jung, Swiss psychiatrist, 1875–1961) archetypes is the least satisfying essay. He studied psychoactive drugs and attempted to explain their effectiveness, in his opinion, on Jungian archetypes. He attempts the same with peyote, as he explains the ritual in terms of Jung's "collective unconscious." A...