Inside the battle to save the sacred peyote ceremony: ‘We’re in dire straits’

Used in Native religious ceremonies but now adopted by A-list celebrities, the cactus is threatened by land development and over-harvesting

Earlier this fall, leaders of the Native American Church of North America (Nacna) made a historic trip to Washington DC to meet with lawmakers about the need to protect peyote - and, with it, the faith of hundreds of thousands of Native people.

Over the course of three days, they sat down with more than 20 lawmakers, federal officials and representatives from the Biden administration. In each meeting, they distributed photos to better illustrate the grim situation: huge swaths of land, in an area of southern Texas known as the Peyote Gardens, brutally cleared by root plowing.