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

by Fannie Kahan, Erika Dyck (Introduction), Abram Hoffer (With), Duncan Blewett (With), Humphry Osmond (With)

Overview

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.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780887558146
Publisher:	University of Manitoba Press
Publication date:	05/06/2016
Edition description:	1
Pages:	176
Sales rank:	331,579
Product dimensions:	6.00(w) x 8.80(h) x 0.60(d)

About the Author

Fannie Kahan (1922–1978) was born in southern Saskatchewan. She was a journalist and the author of a number of books, including Brains and Bricks: The History of the Yorkton Psychiatric Centre (1965) and A Different Drummer: The History of the Saskatchewan Psychiatric Nurses’ Association (1973).

Erika Dyck is a historian of health, medicine, and Canadian society at the University of Saskatchewan. Her research has concentrated on the history of mental health, institutionalization, and experimentation.

Table of Contents

List of Illustrations vi

Acknowledgements vii

Introduction Erika Dyck ix

Editor's Note xli

A Culture's Catalyst (1963)

Chapter 1 Peyote-A Culture's Catalyst: The Eternal Search Fannie Kahan 3

Chapter 2 The Great Bastion Fannie Kahan 8

Chapter 3 The Struggle for Peyote Fannie Kahan 24

Chapter 4 The Spiritual Herb Fannie Kahan 50

Chapter 5 Night in the Tipl Humphry Osmond 67

Chapter 6 The Psychedelic Experience in the Native American Church Duncan Blewett 84

Chapter 7 Peyote Ceremony and Jungian Archetypes Teodoro Weckowicz 96

Chapter 8 Peyote: A Sacrament by Medical Prescription Abram Hotter Humphry Osmond 107

Notes 113

Bibliography 125

Index 127

What People are Saying About This

Maureen Lux

“A fascinating glimpse of psychiatry’s encounter with peyote and First Nations cultures, Fannie Kahan’s A Culture’s Catalyst is by turns patronizing and sympathetic, supportive and paternalistic. On one level Kahan’s collection of essays by cutting-edge mental health experts is both a critique of colonialism and a defense of their own embrace of psychoactive treatments. On a deeper level it is an intriguing illustration of First Nations’ savvy appropriation of elite power and influence to protect cultural and religious rites. It will definitely find a place on my bookshelf and syllabus.”

Editorial Reviews

An extraordinary and unreservedly recommended study.

Helen Dumont