As I said in previous post, medicine has been growing me for 40 years. Last week our son made this lovely piece of art for mom and dad. I saw it when he made it then I saw it again this morning. It really hit me- this is what I was feeling and trying to describe at the outset of this blog, when I plant it. This genius little kid put all those words and more into a beautiful image of family and medicine and love. Brilliant!
So thanks to Fynn, I don’t have to write about that anymore. This is how I came into the tipi. I began to grow medicine with and for my family, and through my fasting and questing, I was led to the right people. Starting with an eccentric artist, seriously devoted to the medicine right in my backyard, just off San Carlos reservation for fasting/vision questing with medicine, no joking around. Then to my ancestral home in Mexico with my Wírraríka relations who showed me how to respect the hunt of it. Then to the tipi I was invited, many years into my own sorting out my life with my family now, more responsibilities. Then to the gardens in Texas for making relations with the people who provide medicine to the church, learning of the lands and the ways it actually is there, beautiful and otherwise.
My 35 years ago look 🙄
And that is the story. My story anyway. There are many layers to the peyote conservation conversation. But the first part of it, for me, is to plant a seed and tend it with my family.
And I say this because if that loving purpose and intention is planted now, then the conversation can grow into something positive and productive from that. So that is my intention in the beginning of this blog. To give detail and visual perspective to why conserving and respectfully cultivating this medicine is a spiritual devotion for me and my family. It is literally the prayer for our family’s future. It doesn’t get more basic or sacred than that.
Now I want to invite some guest opinions that I hope to host in these pages soon. There’s many points of view, not just those of a Mexican Lorax. And don’t get me wrong, it’s not all rainbows and tamales and mescal beans.
There are many aspects to consider in conserving a sacred reliance for the future. Some of them are tedious and depressing- such as regulatory implications to consider and the sad state of affairs in the virtually militarized, ecologically challenged, human trafficking highway in the gardens of south Texas. We have tribal sovereignty and cultural rights directly affected and our conversation must include this aspect as if it were the main pole in the tipi
There are land based, long-term considerations which require considerable planning and resources. There’s the issue of protecting medicine in Mexico and whether or not we can ethically condone any reliance on these populations to alleviate supply challenges. And whose medicine is it anyway, whose responsibility? And who needs to do something about it? Is it a Mexican concern? Because most of it grows there, or are we to focus on protecting Texas while there’s even a sliver of hope? Should landowners be allowed to destroy medicine when converting their own private land? Should the status of peyote be raised from a threatened- to an endangered species federally?
These are a few parts of the longer conversation it’s going to take to evolve into any level of effective protection plan to help the medicine help us. I’m asking you peyote, to help us sensitize and enhance, and activate our endeavors for this purpose.
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The Peyote Lorax 
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