Women’s Medicine: Religious vs. Secular Peyote Consumption in New Spain and the Contemporary United States

This paper examines the production of the distinction between religion and medicine as it pertains to peyote consumption in colonial New Spain and the United States. I posit that whether peyote consumption was considered to be a religious or a secular activity was deeply influenced by the gender of the practitioner. This paper is an exploration toward a theory of Indigenous medicine and healing, centering Indigenous women working with peyote in two radically different time periods.