Spiritual Healing and Human Development in the Native American Church: Toward a Cultural Psychiatry of Peyote

Culture and mental health are two areas of study crucial to an understanding of human lives. Unfortunately, these areas are often conceptualized as separate systems (one social, one biological/individual) rather than as interacting or overlapping domains of meaning. This paper will analyze the interrelationship of culture and mental health, focusing on what this interrelationship implies for my field experiences with Navajo members of the Peyote Religion and for clinical interpretations of drug use generally. After a brief description of the Peyote Religion and its symbolic healing rituals, and a conceptualization of what a meaning-centered “cultural psychiatry” approach might consist of, four processes that relate cultural meaning and mental health will be identified and ethnographic observations will be interpreted in the light of these processes.

The Peyote Religion, also called the Native American Church (hereafter NAC), is a Native North American revitalization movement that has, throughout this century, spread from its origin point in Oklahoma to various tribes throughout the United States. The NAC is distinguished by its use of the psychedelic peyote cactus as a sacrament and medicinal treatment for a variety of physical and psychological conditions. Among my Navajo consultants, peyote is