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

Kahan, Fannie

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0887558143 ISBN 13: 9780887558146

Publisher: University of Manitoba Press, 2016

Synopsis

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.

About this title

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 an associate professor and Canada Research Chair in the History of Medicine at the University of Saskatchewan. She is the author of Psychedelic Psychiatry: LSD on the Canadian Prairies.

Review

“An extraordinary and unreservedly recommended study.” (Helen Dumont Midwest Book Review)

About this edition

• Publisher: University of Manitoba Press
• Publication date: 2016
• ISBN 10: 0887558143
• ISBN 13: 9780887558146
• Binding: Paperback
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 176