To me, the Peyote Road is a way of life. In the NAC religion peyote is not viewed recreationally but as a Sacrament with a living teacher spirit. We have no word in our language for "hallucination." Our Sacrament is becoming endangered through practices such as root plowing over-harvesting and improper harvesting techniques. I feel it as my duty as a steward of our Medicine to draw attention to this and to explore avenues of conservation/cultivation. Currently, the NAC has no formal position on cultivation and Federal regulations are ambiguous concerning cultivation by Native American Church members. I would like to change this. Any suggestions or comments?
Aho! We need to make our voices heard as one. Let the spirit of this medicine speak through us to fight the injustice of the environmental atrocities that are being committed in the peyote's homeland. We need to get more NAC members connected to start greenhouses for our charters. If the feds want to step in let them, and the ACLU will come to prove in court like they did in Utah that Peyote is a legitimate sacrament and our members have the right to grow it under the protection of the religious freedom restoration act. We need more seed money to purchase the scrubland in the four counties of Texas that Peyote grows from greedy ranchers and oil companies and return it to the proper nations of the Tlaxcala, Carizzo, and other peoples who ancestrally were the stewards of the medicine in the region. These people should lead the replanting and maintenance of a wildlife preserve made specifically for the medicine. If we can share the same vision we might be able to achieve a future for this medicine and keep it around for the generations yet to come to this earth.
I grew up on what was basically an Indian reservation in the Great Plains region. The Cheyenne and Arapaho tribes had peyote meetings, sweat lodges, Pow-Wows and other cool traditional activities regularly. Never realized how lucky I was at the time to be raised around people with such a rich cultural heritage (I'm 1/8th Seminole myself lol). Back to your post, OP: I agree that the current state of the Peyote plant as we know it is dire. It's a combination of factors--Peyote's long growth/maturation period in conjunction with over-harvesting by MANY groups, not just Native Americans. My best advice would be for all NAC members to take advantage of their legal privileges and grow as many cacti as possible. There's plenty of cultivation info online, and cacti can even be purchased in some rather obvious places on the net.
