The Peyote Debates
One of the more complicated dimensions of Zitkála-Šá’s political career was her position in the debates about peyote within both the Society of American Indians and the broader political arena.
Peyote — a cactus whose mescaline content produces hallucinogenic effects — was and is used in ceremonies by the Native American Church and other traditional religious practices. The question of whether peyote use should be restricted or banned was a significant political issue in the early twentieth century, with anti-peyote campaigns organized both by some Native advocates (who associated peyote with the degradation of Native communities) and by non-Native reformers (who framed it as a form of intoxication incompatible with the civilization project).
Zitkála-Šá took an anti-peyote position in the debates, writing against peyote use and supporting restrictions. This position put her in conflict with some other Native voices, including some traditional practitioners for whom peyote ceremonies were an important form of religious and cultural expression.
The peyote debates are a reminder that Zitkála-Šá, despite being one of the most eloquent critics of the assimilation project, did not occupy a position of simple opposition to all of its values or frameworks. Her own experience of Christian education, her integration into the Anglo-American literary and cultural world, and her own political judgments about what was damaging to Native communities led her to positions that were sometimes in tension with the full range of traditional Native practices.
This complexity is part of her historical reality, and it should not be flattened. She was not a figure of pure opposition to the assimilation system. She was a person who had been shaped by that system and who drew on some of its frameworks while critiquing others. This is what makes her historical position interesting and what makes her writing so resistant to simple summary.