Great Plains Quarterly

A Culture's Catalyst provides a rich, fascinating view into the little-known history of the peyote religion of the Native American Church in Canada (NACC) and the unique involvement of a group of researchers working in 1950s Saskatchewan who studied psychedelic substances such as LSD (lysergic acid diethylamide) and mescaline for their therapeutic potential in treating drug addiction and schizophrenia. The Native American Church (NAC) is a syncretic religion that integrates Christianity with Pan–Native American elements that are predominantly derived from Plains Indian traditions; it includes the sacramental use of the mescaline-containing cactus peyote (Lophophora william-sii), a psychoactive cactus native to the desert lands of south Texas and northern Mexico.

Erika Dyck, associate professor and Canada Research Chair in the History of Medicine at the University of Saskatchewan, discovered an unpublished manuscript completed in 1963 that detailed this unusual juncture in history that brought together psychiatrists Abram Hoffer and Humphrey Osmond, and psychologists Duncan Blewett and Teddy Weckowicz, to observe and participate in an all-night peyote ceremony near Battlefield, Saskatchewan, in 1956. Recognizing the significance of this manuscript, Dyck worked with the University of Manitoba Press to publish A Culture's Catalyst: Historical Encounters with Peyote and the Native American Church in Canada. Also, the information in this manuscript was key to Dyck's chapter, "Peyote and Psychedelics on the Canadian Prairies," in Peyote: History, Tradition, Politics and Conservation, edited by Beatriz Caiuby Labate and Clance Cavanar (Praeger, 2016).

The book begins with an introduction by Dyck, which presents background information on the subject, followed by chapters by the authors that express their own thoughts and impressions. Saskatchewan journalist Fannie Kahan was the original coordinator, editor, and contributor to this collaborative project. Kahan, like her brother Abram Hoffer, came from a cultural foundation that was grounded in the family's experience as Jewish Russian–eastern European immigrants who were part of an agricultural resettlement program in Saskatchewan. Through these eyes, she provides history and context to the plight of First Nations people over time and a penetrating critique of the policies, attitudes, and actions of Canadian and US governments and the involvement of Christian churches and missionaries. As well, her colleagues in this publication recognized the vital importance peyote and the NAC played for First Nations members in providing unification, dignity, pride, and identification with [End Page 126] their Indigenous culture, and advocated for their rights to practice this religion. Readers must also be cognizant of the time period that Culture's Catalyst was written; some passages reflect a naïve romanticism and express a benevolent paternalistic attitude toward Indigenous culture. Their tone is a reminder of the authors' reaction to the outrageous misconceptions the majority society had at that time about Indigenous people and the NAC religion.

Other sections acknowledge the implications the NAC's use of peyote had for western medicine and society, as exemplified in one passage by Blewett:

The Indians have gone beyond the scientists of today in their use and control of the psychedelic experience. … [I]t is difficult for … a group to achieve the spiritual levels of which the Indians, through their careful structuring of the situation, have been able to achieve in groups. … [T]hese are the features which make the psychedelic peyote experience directly applicable to dayto-day living.

(94)

With a resurgence in psychedelic research and a rise in Indigenous Peoples' rights for sovereignty and self-determination, the time is finally right for this book to see the light of day. Kudos to Erika Dyke and the University of Manitoba Press for completing this project begun by these pioneering researchers more than fifty years ago.