Bordering on Legal: Self-Representation and Peyote Cults in the United States and Mexico during the Early Twentieth Century

Some time during the 18th century, peyote religions crossed from Mexico into what eventually became the United States. These communities remained small and isolated at first, but after peyotism was disseminated through a number of Indian Boarding Schools in the Early 20th century, American Indian peyotists began to organize and seek protection for their religion under the Freedom of Religion clause of the US Constitution. Their organization, the Native American Church, became one of the critical avenues of Indigenous Self-determination in the early 20th Century US. In spite of federal prohibitions against the possession, distribution and consumption of peyote, during the 1920s members of the Native American Church argued successfully at the state level in several regions for their right to consume peyote. At the same time, even though Peyotism was a more ancient and enshrined practice among certain Indigenous groups in Mexico, no similar phenomena ever emerged south of the US-Mexican Border. Indigenous peyotists in Mexico, principally Huichols, continued their practices in relative obscurity, developed (or joined) no pan-indigenous organizations to defend their practices, and by the 1970s found it increasingly difficult to undertake their religious practices both because of harassment from judicial officials and because of larger environmental and economic changes. This paper asks why peyotism had such different trajectories (legal and social practices) in the US and Mexico during this period, and endeavors to use these differences to understand different practices tied to indigeneity and self-representation in these two contexts. It will also explore the ways that different concepts of indigeneity embraced by state officials in the US and Mexico have at times had a profound an impact on the cultures and practices of indigenous peoples.