Speaker 1: Welcome to the Crime Pays a Botany doesn't podcasts. I'm
here with Leonardo Mercado, who is the greenhouse steward for
morning Star Conservancy, which is a PAOTI conservation and propagation
organization based out of southern Arizona and the beautiful Tucson
area and whose board is comprised of Native American church members.
Morning Star. When when was morning Star formed? Leo? When
did it? When did you guys aggregate and come together
to attain this goal or working towards this goals?
Speaker 2: We probably started looking around southern Texas doing your basic
recon on what the situation was down there. We probably
started looking around southern Texas at conservation possibilities in two
thousand and three. But it goes back to the original
trip we had in ninety five or ninety six in
which we met up with doctor Martin Terry at that time,
and we met with the Peyotros down there. We uh
trucked around, We had discussions and thought about it, and
we started to pray about it, and somewhere in the
early two thousands we decided, well, let's let's get this together.
It's been too many years. Let's at least start an
organization where we can start to advocate mm hm.
Speaker 1: And so you were going were you going to Mirando City?
Where were you going? In South Texas?
Speaker 2: Mostly to Rio Grand City right on the river. There
were several licensed dealers back then. So we'd visit around
and we we'd head up to Mirando City as well.
Speaker 1: And what was the what was the status of the
plant back then?
Speaker 2: Like?
Speaker 1: What did that area look like back then? What what
did you see?
Speaker 2: Like?
Speaker 1: What was that the first time you would really spend
time in this region.
Speaker 2: No, I'd been down there trekking around myself throughout the
eighties also, and I think what we saw that is
most noticeable differentiated from today is that the average size
of the plants that were being harvested were fairly large,
or was fairly large three inches across, you know, nothing
really smaller than a silver dollar, with some exceptions maybe
down to a fifty cent kind of size, so.
Speaker 1: Like baseball size, probably.
Speaker 2: Well up to yeah. Yeah, you also saw a certain
proportion of large plants. It was not uncommon. Insadly, you
still find from fresh fines some really nice plants occasionally,
but the average is sometimes quarter size, fifty cent size.
And I think that's the best way to describe it
is in terms of coin size.
Speaker 1: Just so for people that might be listening in other
regions of the country, describe what South Texas I mean,
because if I remember, the first time I came down
here was like twenty fourteen for Botany, and it just
it felt like just total backgroad like remote, Like this
place is off the map. This is wild. I mean,
the buildings world it was, the habitat was wild. I
came down here expecting desert, and it's not really desert.
It's kind of desert, but it's it's humid and it's green.
And I mean, explain what explain to people who might
be listening what it felt like. I mean, not just
the Payot difference, but like the whole the whole area.
Speaker 2: Yeah, it's different than the snoring desert for sure. I
consider it. Uh, it's almost well, it's a thorn scrub
and so for me, it's kind of hard to get
around it. It's so brushy.
Speaker 1: Yeah, it's not open because you're you grew up in
southern Arizona, you grew up on the Heler rivers.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and I know how to navigate this desert pretty well.
It's a lot more opened up. It's a lot more
like West Texas. So when you're in Brewster Presidio County
in West Texas, Uh, it's a completely different environment than
that South Texas, and I was not accustomed to it.
It's pretty wild, you know it. It's called thorn scrub
for a reason. But you know, uh, if you don't
get some scratches while you're in it, you're not really
doing it right.
Speaker 1: Right, Yes, scratches and maybe some ticks.
Speaker 2: So it's tough and it's humid, and it's not really
easy to find medicine. But back in the day when
you found it, it was you could find healthy populations
scattered about, and as you know, those are a lot
harder to find. And the applied pressure from just harvesting
for Native American churches is accumulative, I think, is the
word right. So it's added up over fifty years. It
sixty years now since nineteen seventy what year we enjoy
this five now? Yeah, yeah, you're the snake. And I
think in that time we've seen this this ramped up
gradient effect. And that's why I mentioned the size of
the planets, because when there's less fine you're getting down
to like what would be the equivalent of fawns in
the deer population.
Speaker 1: Right, it's like the bottom of the barrel, the last drags,
like all the all the big plants are gone, and
you're just harvesting what's left. But explain to people, because
I think a lot of people, I mean, the vast
majority of Americans have no clue that this is a thing.
They just they view peyote as some sort of party drug.
They don't, you know, it's just the effects of the
failed drug war. They don't. They're they're unaware of its
sanctity to Native Americans, how it's used that it's uh,
you know, the tepee ceremony, the origin of the Native
American Church, all that. We don't need to get into everything.
But but basically, in short, there's a huge cultural demand
among Native Americans for this plant, and this is the
only place that it grows in a sizable enough population
to harvest, right. So, and that's set up by the
peyotero system. So you got we're coming down here to
basically purchase medicine for ceremonies, and seeing that there was
less of it, that's when morning Star formed.
Speaker 2: Right. So a lot like that, dear analogy. If there's
a license hunt, if it's not regulated, an unlicensed hunt
is the same as a license hunt. In other words,
at that point, it's all poaching. If you can take
the pregnant dose the fonds as well as the bucks,
if there's an economic incentive to do so, you will
eventually degrade the species by taking everybody. Right, So it's
a license but unregulated for pot because there is a
license hunt for it. And that sounds a little weird
because most people are like, right, Poti is a schedule
and substance listed with you know, heroine, meth whatever. Everybody
kind of knows that, but not everybody knows that there's
a licensed hunt. And that's for the use of Native
American Church members. It's a claw out in the nineteen
seventy Controlled Substances Act, So there's this exemption for members
of the Native American Church and for people who register
to distribute to members of the Native American Church very specifically,
and so it's a licensed hunt. The dealers pay it's
something like thirteen hundred dollars a year right now. They
pay it three years at a time, but they have
to reregister annually to keep the license. It's fairly controlled
that way. There's only three dealers left. There may be
a new one right now, but it's a hard scrabble
living when the population has declined and you still have
to make a business out of it.
Speaker 1: And this is state regulated, right, This is not I
mean the dealer system to pay a thera system state regularly.
It's not even federal regularly. This is like run by Texas.
This is Texas jurisdiction.
Speaker 2: There's a federal form. But yes, I do believe it
is for several years now been managed by Texas DPS. Yeah.
And so the thing about that is, like I said,
it is licensed, but it's not regulated in any manner.
In other words, pick as much as you want, sell
as much as you want, We don't care. As long
as you have the landowner's permission. That's the only other
three requisite to the legal trade, you know, the legal hunt. Yeah.
And so not every land is going to want to
allow random people that work for the dealer to be
clawing around on their land.
Speaker 1: Yeah.
Speaker 2: So there's a limited area, not just geographically and ecologically,
but also I guess what you call privately because of
land ownership. And there's no public lands where payote is growing.
Speaker 1: But there's also there's also the payote lease too, which
I think is again the foreign idea to people that
don't live down here or don't have any you know,
don't know anybody in the Native American Church. There's payote
leases where just like with hunting, you know, payotero's will
pay a landowner for the right to go on their
land and look for payote and cut it, harvest it,
put it in a little potato sack, bring it back,
and then sell it to members of the NAC of
the Native American.
Speaker 2: Result to sell it to the dealer specifically who resells
it to the Native American Church. Yeah, but yeah, it's
a payouty lease, which is where the analogy comes together
here because that peuty lease. The reason it's done is
because the same ranchers sell leases to deer hunters, and
so there's no reason for them not to do likewise
for the peuty dealers. But in the case of the
deer hunt, you can't take out every dear, and you
don't or there won't be a future hunt. But when
it comes to payote, they just sure take whatever payote.
There's no standards, is what I'm trying to say, there's
there's no mind to its future. And that's really the
crux of what we're talking about today. How it gets
that way, How it got that way. It's it's very multilayer.
There's a lot of reasons, and that creates this pressure
on the population. That's kind of how my mind looks
at it. Yeah, I look at it as like, I
don't know what are we talking about here? Six or
seven different forms of pressure on it because we haven't
even discussed the land degradation right, the land converge.
Speaker 1: Yeah, this is like it's a whole other element of
It's a whole other weight on it. But definitely when
you start thinking about this, I mean, every Native American
church chapter that uses peyote as medicine or as sacrament
in all night meetings and teepee ceremonies, whether they're in
upstate New York, or whether they're in Idaho, or whether
they're in Canada, all that peote comes from down here
because it's the only place that it grows, and so
there it's like having a bathtub filled with a population
of a plant species to use a metaphor, and the
drain is consistently on. It's there's water going out the drain,
there's plants going out the drain, but the spigot is
slowly the handle slowly being turned to the right and
turned off, and there's not as much there's not as
many plants going in. And I like the deer hunt
analogy especially because it's it really sums it up. Everybody
who's got any experience with hunting or in a you know,
in a rural area whatever, understands you can't take certain
deer because that will affect the population. It's it's just
a it's just it's just logic. But when it comes
to this plant, that's not really I mean, there's not
many people that seem to be getting that. I mean,
I guess more so today. But you know, it's it's
kind of a new thing. The concept well.
Speaker 2: You know, the rich old people, it's actually an whole
thing in a sense because they literally actually say that
the peary hunt is the deer hunt, you know, And
and traditionally they talked about how the roots or the
bones and so that you leave them buried so that
the deer can grow back from the bones.
Speaker 1: So the wheat showl are in Mexico for anybody listening,
which is again like the southern, the southern end of
Payot's distribution. But they're I mean, they're getting they're facing
issues their clearance for land clearance for building just residential areas,
and also for agriculture, for tomato farms. I think, I
don't know what it Maybe it wasn't.
Speaker 2: Yeah, tomato and chili greenhouses mostly. Yeah, and it's money
laundering operation. You know, the money wasn't clean to start with,
and it's not really clean when it's done either, you know.
Speaker 1: Yeah, imagine that corruption in Mexico sketchy. Okay, Well, anyway,
so that habitat is much different from from this too.
It's it's more akin to West Texas. It's drier, it's
not as humid, and it's high. It's higher elevation. I
think it's like four thousand and five thousand feet.
Speaker 2: Yeah, it is. Well, let's let's get into that real
quick though, because to use your bathtub analogy, right, So,
because of the pressure on that one bathtub north of
the Rio Grande, uh, what actually happens is you have
to start opening up the taps on the bathtub south
of you too, and the neighboring buildings guy, because the
reality is that a lot of people are now dependent
I guess you'd say on medicine that comes up from
south of the border. It's a dirty little secret that
kind of everybody knows. So almost to bring it up,
bring it up, right. Although I believe the IPCI officially
applied for license to bring it from Mexico at one point,
I don't know what the status of that application or
or endeavor might be right now. So that's like the
open air one. But there's a lot of Yeah.
Speaker 1: This is ip Movement Indigenous Paoti Conservation Initiative.
Speaker 2: Yeah, they actually applied for a DEA license standport, which
is the way you're supposed to do it, But there's
a lot of other ways to do it, as everybody knows, right,
And I just want to bring that up because if
we don't, we're not looking at the whole chessboard.
Speaker 1: So now the drain's been opened on the bathtub in
Mexico too.
Speaker 2: Well, yeah it has been for some time. I can
tell you this that in the late nineteen eighties we
used to see it down there by the literally by
the borough, pulled cart load. And I'm not saying that
all that was going to Native American church use in
the States. A lot of that was going to Europe.
And I don't believe that's really ever stopped, although it
may be getting hard to do, just because they got
to get back more into the real wild zones to
find it more often. So the population in Mexico.
Speaker 1: The populations in Mexico were much more robust. I mean
probably still are compared to South Texas.
Speaker 2: There still are because of the expanse of it, just
the vast amount of terrain involved. Whereas in South Texas,
as you know, you got a little strip going what
maybe one hundred miles north of the Rio Grand the
Medicine Road. Four counties, there's a little strip.
Speaker 1: Four counties here, and then two counties in two or
three counties in West Texas. But the West Texas populations
are tiny compared to this, I mean they're.
Speaker 2: Just and there used to be a ton around Laredo, right,
and we're talking in the fifties and sixties to the
point to where it was commercially exported before the Controlled
Substances Act. To my understanding, most of that was for
collectors in your.
Speaker 1: Oh so just just like horticultural nerds, not even.
Speaker 2: Like yeah, yeah, it was before the acid age, so
it was being shipped out, though nonetheless along with a
lot of other species. It wasn't just the Lafatha. It
was also like area of carpus and I can't remember
what a lot of things.
Speaker 1: I mean that should be noted too, that the Laredo
area is in it's it's a huge amount of sprawl.
At some point, Laredo and the Rio Grand Valley are
going to merge into the same metro area. I mean,
the sprawl here is insane. It's gonna be an endless
strip of you know, ambulance chaser billboards, car dealership's, Chick
fil A and just tracked housing. I mean, the water
will probably run out before that. I don't know. I
guess we could take bets on that, well, the water
run out before Laredo and the Rio Grand Valley merge.
Speaker 2: I don't know, but my bid is on Phoenix they
run out first.
Speaker 1: Yeah, Phoenix is going to run out first.
Speaker 2: But you know what, here's an interesting thing like this
is just because you know me, I'm a little bit
of a weirdo. I'm not afraid to say it. I
actually have like beliefs about stuff, and one of them
I like to just you know, play around with in
my own mind, is that maybe up there in those
regions around Laredo that are still left to you know,
they just like, yeah, they got over harvested and da
da da. But I like to believe that somewhere out
there there's these seeds and small remnants of plants that
are repopulating these territories where nobody even bothers to look
for it anymore.
Speaker 1: Behind the loobies, there could be like I'm just ups.
Speaker 2: Around Valverdi County, you know, Valberdi County. What's that up there?
Speaker 1: Comstock, It's nice theo You go north of Laredo and
it is egle Pass. I mean, I like those little
border towns as depressing as they could be with their
payday loan centers like you see like nine payday loan
centers on the same block.
Speaker 2: You know, a family dollar.
Speaker 1: You could go buy a dildo with you know, take
out like a thirty percent interest loan and then go
buy a dildo and hit a newdy booth and then
like go, you know, buy some buy some Chinese goods
at the dollar store. Yeah. But uh, but.
Speaker 2: You know, don't know what. So there used to be
medicine growing up there right there used to be is
what I'm saying. And so so my backwards belief is
that like maybe when it just gets left alone for
long enough, it repopulates somehow, like a seed.
Speaker 1: Bank, Like there's this like a seed bank that can
I'm sure payoty seeds can probably last for decades.
Speaker 2: I think they do.
Speaker 1: You would know more than anyone else, which we're going
to get to because you're a propagator. But okay, so
we're setting the stage for the situation, which is again
the bathtub analogy as well as the deer hunt analogy
really hits it spot on. I mean that is like
it's better than the bathtub almost, but there's a constant
there's a constant drain. And Native American church members from
all over North America are getting their plants, mostly from
South Texas, maybe from maybe a bit from Mexico as well,
but either way, that's what we're seeing is a shrinking
population and it gets moving. It's like quickly shrinking, it's
very rapidly shrinking. And so a few people noticed this,
yourself included, and decided to come together to form this organization.
And when did you guys form this? This was late nineties,
early two thousands, or when did Morning start form?
Speaker 2: Yeah, the official year that we incorporated might have been
two thousand and six. I'm having fuzzy memory. Time happened
quickly since I but we've been talking about this forever,
just as members of the church. I mean, you don't
really come out of the teepee in the morning without
a certain amount of pondering the situation of how lucky
we are to have this plan. See. So it's like
it's sparked by a sense of gratitude for the benefits
we feel from it. It starts with that. But I
guess some people might say that that's kind of what
is it anthropicentric? It's like ducks Unlimited, So you decide
to save the ducks because you're so into duck hunting.
Speaker 1: Oh, ducks unlimited. You know, I'm not familiar with ducks
and limited. I just see the hats, so don't I
don't know.
Speaker 2: So what I'm saying though, is, yeah, we love the
fact that it's there for us. But you know, I
love where you're coming from, Joey, because you're looking at
the ecology as a whole, right, looking at the interplay
of species, and you know, ethnabotany is part of that.
I always the human use of the plant is part
of that. Yeah, So I guess what I'm saying is
like I fell in love with the plant originally as
a plant, right trying to find it myself out in
the desert, and then became so intrigued by the fact
that there were people who apparently knew how to use
it medicinally, so.
Speaker 1: You fell in love with it before you ever ing.
Speaker 2: God, Yeah, it dragged me into the tep against my will.
Speaker 1: I mean, this was a and what was it? It's
I mean because I always tell people that, you know,
the fact that psychoactive is the least interesting thing about
the species to me, right right, It's a giant battery
in the ground. That's that, without using spines, like like
so many of its relatives, is able to defend itself
against things that want to eat it. It's able to hide.
It's it's such a cool adaptation so perfectly.
Speaker 2: I just wish I almost wish it wasn't psychoactive now
that I think about it, right, because like it makes
it so complicated to even talk about like I'm serious,
Like there's something about it that just weirds me out.
Like let me just say this. I don't want to
be like insensitive to anybody here, but this thing about
psychoactivity is almost like the new gay, you know what
I'm saying, or or or people not wanting to get
blacklisted for cammy sympathies or something like this.
Speaker 1: What do you mean?
Speaker 2: It's it's barely we're barely able to talk about it
a little bit now because of psychedelic research therapy, investment potential.
Speaker 1: Oh yeah, yeah, And.
Speaker 2: Like you know, there was this recent Rogan thing about
abrogating therapy, and it was like I enjoyed it. It
was former Texas Governor Rick Perry.
Speaker 1: Was he wearing a glasses? Was he wearing a he
puts on those glasses?
Speaker 2: Do you think I watched it?
Speaker 1: He makes himself look smarter?
Speaker 2: And it was actually weird to me in the sense that, hey,
we're actually openly talking about this thing about the prohibition
of a medicine because it happens to be psychoactive as
ridiculous anymore, you know, And I'm glad we're finally getting there.
And so I guess that's the reason I say, it
would be so much simpler if it was just the
beauty of the plant, the collectibility, Like, yeah, everybody who's
in the cacti in succulents, they want to have a
paoty plant. They're not wanting to eat it.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I.
Speaker 2: Don't want to eat it, Joey, And I'm the peoty warrat. Okay,
I don't want to eat it, like I really don't.
So I love that I can go to ceremonies, but
even in there, I'm like, oh God, here comes that
medicine really quick.
Speaker 1: When when you guys got together for a morning Star
decided to start growing this and trying to because you
were initially trying to purchase land to conserve in South Texas,
but having to live in South Texas can be a
tall order for anybody, let me tell you, I know
firsthand about that. So but but why was My question
is why was nobody doing this before? What was there
there was a saying that the peoty will take care
of itself right among NAC members and natives, that the
paoty will take care of itself? Is that partially to
explain why nobody had really, you know, ventured out into
the area of conservation and propagation before or what.
Speaker 2: Well, it's largely because in nineteen seventy when this whole
thing was set up for the Paro Dedo distribution system,
and thank God for it. You know the story of
Grandma garden Us, Grandma Coyote down there and amount into
the city.
Speaker 1: Yeah right, yeah, yes.
Speaker 2: It was her family.
Speaker 3: That randof Literally they literally stepped up and made a
case out of it, you know, purposefully to say, look,
are we wrong in doing this and supplying the natives,
you know, for their ceremonial needs.
Speaker 2: No, it's a tradition, it's something that needs to happen. Otherwise,
how are we going to do this Because it's all
private land. Somebody needs to be set up to help
these people out that can't get out and do their
own prayers and everything. It was set up in a
good way that way, but you get the government involved
and sometimes help can be otherwise. So what I'm saying
is in nineteen seventy one that was basically set up
around there. Uh, there was plenty of paeoti still growing
out there, so it didn't look like it was going
to be an issue. And little did they know that
in fifty or sixty years we would have overfish that pathub,
you know, like you just you can't just keep poling
from the same stock, same stock, with no like I say,
actual consideration to the future expected to exist.
Speaker 1: The land clearance too. I don't think anybody saw the
amount of habitat destruction and sprawl. I mean, the idea
of a metro suburban region slowly encroaching on this region
to Texas was I'm sure in the nineties seemed like otherworldly,
like impossible, you know, because it was so cutty. When
I came down here in twenty fourteen, it was so cutty,
you know, I was like, God, where the fuck am I? Man?
It was, I mean, I liked it, but it was
it had this kind of almost spooky feeling down here,
like you'd see these old houses, dilapidated houses, overgrown with
you know, pollo verde trees and miscuats that were all
And it's a different species of misky than you get
in Arizona too. It's a much more robust, drooping tree.
And it just, I mean it was it just felt
so like, you know, off the map down here, and
I don't think people saw that at some point they're
going to be clearing land to put up like little
you know, ten acre rancheetahs, uh, you know, and and
with lawns and you know, the fucking all the suburban amenities.
I mean, they're they're like suburbanizing parts of Starr County.
It's wild to see. But really quick though. With Amada,
did you had you met her? I was at her
her house that anybody listening is like a is like
a museum now basically, and it's still an active They
have tep ceremonies there and Native American Church has tep
ceremonies there and comes down to hold all night meetings
people from Oklahoma. A lot of people from Oklahoma come
down monthly. And I was at her house once and
I remember, uh, someone showing me a box of letters
that she had in envelopes that were stamped in the
mid eighties from people from natives from all over the country,
you know, writing or these really heartfelt letters saying thank
you or you know, placing orders for medicine. It was
really cool to see. I mean, that whole area Miranda
City is a really really cool little spot on the map.
I'm glad her house is protected, but did you meet her.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I was able to meet her a few times
in the last five years or so of her life.
And she was, you know, in a wheelchair and church
members had built a ramp up to her door so
she could still come in and out. And it was beautiful.
It was like my grandma's house. That's why. That's why
it's named Grandma's Place still. And for people that don't know,
it's a prayer site, right, It's where people stop when
they go down to purchase their pot and they make
prayers and they pray for their travel, They smoke tobacco,
they leave coins sometimes and make offerings and it's just
a beautiful thing that we have that. And the thing
is is it's you know, a weird way, Joey. It
reminds me of how humble this, this actual tradition is.
Like all these other religions. They got their meccas there,
you know, Saint Peter's Square, you know, or what have you.
We got this little place where Grandma's kind of semi
beat up a little bit on the edges. Old house
is just sitting there and people still stop and pay
respects to her and her family. It's a it's a
real beautiful cultural tradition.
Speaker 1: Yeah, it's a really special site we I was helping
to put in. Yeah, like a native plant garden at
the UH at the little prayer garden that they have,
and they've got a there's a cool archway, like metal
archway ri over the entrance to her house too. It's
a it's a it's a really beautiful, beautiful.
Speaker 2: Yeah, that archway, it's like a metal cutout with a tepee.
I've got a really nice image of it. And it's
got the four words, which are the tenants of the
Native American Church, Faith, Love, Hope, and charity.
Speaker 1: Right, Yeah, Yeah, that was I was trying to remember
what the words were when I was talking about that.
I should mention that that's a real because I remember
seeing it was it's a beautiful saying, but I couldn't
remember what exactly the the words were. So I'm glad
you did.
Speaker 2: That's that's our journey, brother, that is our journey.
Speaker 1: Your memory is much your memory is better than mine sometimes. Okay. So,
so morning Star is a conservation and propagation organization. You
guys are actively growing payote seedlings in Arizona where state
law permits it for Native Americans because Native American I
don't I don't even think ANAC members Native Americans are
able to propagate in Texas, actively growing it in Arizona.
But at the same time, there's a demand by many
Native groups to keep it, to keep it illegal, to
prevent any decriminalization. Like some of the I feel like
the psychedelic it's such a corny word. The psychedelic renaissance, God,
I fucking hated has died down a little bit, especially
since you know, the failures of MDMA to be legalized,
and it was found out there were touchers in some
of these psychedelic therapy groups, which is not surprising to me,
you know, there were creepers. But but anyway, it's died
down a little bit, so there's not I feel like
there's not as much demand for you know, for psychedelics
among these startups, these these startup groups. But but there's
I think it this this this motive to keep it,
to keep payodia illegal and prevent it from being decriminalized.
While all these other things were like psilocybin and other psychdelics,
this was a thing that was kind of started with
the last eight to ten years where there you actually
had now Native groups, you know, petitioning the federal government
to keep payote illegal or petitioning local municipalities like Santa
Cruz County, California, to prevent payote from being decriminalized.
Speaker 2: Well, yeah, you had interest in psychedelic therapy, you ramping up.
Maybe the investment level of it has ramped down a
bit lately, but the interest in d KRIM laws probably
has also ramped down a little bit. And what that
was was these localized, usually localized municipal referendums to legalize
plants basically in some cases all controlled substances, depending on
the jurisdiction. And one of the one of the hallmark
efforts was in the city of Santa Cruz, California, there
was an exemption to decriminalizing all plants applied in that
Santa Cruz referendum. And that was that because of the
UH consideration for spiritual use of purity by Native Americans,
that it should remain illegal to possess, cultivate, or.
Speaker 1: Just what was the point of It's a it's.
Speaker 2: A backwards exemption, you know, instead of being exempt so
it is legal, it's exempt so it remains illegal. In
a d CRIM law, and that became like a boiler
plate attachment the style that was used in Santa Cruz
for upcoming future d crim laws which were passed around
the country after that.
Speaker 1: M like you were talking about something in Michigan that.
Speaker 2: Was yeah, yeah, different places, Portland, Oregon possibly some states.
It might have been Oregon and Washington possibly that passed
their own d crim I can't quite remember, but the
reason for it was ostensibly out of respect for the
spiritual traditions that go with pod Well. I mean, there's
if I could find a straight logic to all this,
I would have endorsed the very same idea. The idea
may be noble, but the reality is that every other
plant that they were d crimming also has its own
spiritual traditions, you know, and some indigenous traditional culture that
knows how to use that plan. So it was you know, okay,
I get it. This one grows native in the US,
and it has its spiritual tradition. It's otherwise scheduled one,
but we respect that, so we don't want people messing
with it. The problem is is that that would also
exclude conservation efforts for one thing, and does it really
help anybody, because just to get a little bit into
the weeds. This this proposal in Lansing, Michigan. I was
asked to speak to the city council about and I
tried to help make sense of it for them because
they were curious, how do you feel, you know, you're
a conservator of paote. What do you think we should
do about this payote thing? I said, well, I I
feel like it should be protected and you know, conserved.
I don't understand how legalizing its, let's say, cultivation and
lancing in Michigan takes away from anything. It's not a
thing that's instant. It's not like growing mushrooms where you
can have a crop in two months, you know. I
kind of more or less said to them that I
feel that if somebody can grow peoty from the seed
in their apartment in Lansing, Michigan at the end of eight, ten,
twelve years, they kind of deserve to eat that thing
in the privacy of their own life, you know. I mean,
I can't really And here's the crazy thing, Jerry that
it's kind of hard to get across, but it's kind
of weird, doesn't make any sense. Let's just say that
all of a sudden today they decide I can grow
peoty in my apartment legally in Lansing, Michigan. And so
I'm a good law biding citizen. I say, hey, it's
no longer illegal. I think I'm interested. Well, you don't
then get in a car and drive down to South
Texas to pluck some up from the desert, or you
can't find it in the first place, really, and it's
highly illegal and you might get shot, and it's federally illegal,
and it's illegal in the state of Texas, and it's
illegal to transport it between every state between Texas and Michigan.
That legalization in lancing is not going to make you
go break the law and deplete it in this native habita.
Speaker 1: Now, we're not saying Lansing, Michigan is not important. We're
not trying to offend, you know, we're not saying that
what lancing does isn't going to affect other locales. You know,
we don't want to downplay beautiful lancing. But but this
does seem absurd. It does seem absurd to put laws
in place, or to petition for laws to be kept
in place, to prevent the cultivation of what's essentially a
harmless plant in a place that's you know, a thousand
miles away from where it's native.
Speaker 2: Well, you hit on something that I think is also
important to discuss. It's really one of the main pieces
on the chessboard, and that is that it's not right
that it's classified as a Schedule one substance by the
very wording required to make a substance Schedule one. If
you think about it for a.
Speaker 1: Second, it.
Speaker 2: Was it was we kind of know this about cannabis, right, Like,
come on, it can't it's not Schedule one. Read the
words apply it to the plant, you know, And it's
the same way with peoty. Guess what. It has never
hurt anybody.
Speaker 1: Yeah, if you have too much, you just throw up.
Speaker 2: I'm living in a desert where there's rattlesnakes, choya and
uh detura plant, and detura is perfectly legal to grow
around your place. It's a it's a desired ornamental to some,
but it's a kind of a weedy ever presence around here.
You know. It just grows. It doesn't acquire hardly any
water or anything, and people tend to oftenselves by over
ingesting it from time to time.
Speaker 1: Well, yeah, and everybody. Everybody knows. You know someone in
high school who ate a couple who ate a pod
and then you know was picked up by the cops
walking down the freeway naked at three in the morning.
Speaker 2: You know, at least i'd so if I walk out
in my backyard and I'm not watching what I'm doing,
I run straight into Teddy Beartoia guy, and that is
going to be one of the worst days of your.
Speaker 1: Talk about a sensual essensual cactus.
Speaker 2: So the main thing, even if you're even if your
dog runs down into it, right, you're one of the
worst days of your life.
Speaker 1: I mean, I appreciate it. I appreciate did you miss?
Lindra Puntia is a botanist. But I'm not gonna I'm
not going to pretend it's not harmful and dangerous.
Speaker 2: But so I'm just trying to say that there's a
lot more dangerous plants than they and if we look
at it clearly, it really shouldn't be a Schedule one drug. Well, yeah,
I mean, all I'm trying to say.
Speaker 1: Caffeine has a LD fifty a lethal dose when consumed
by half the population. That's much much higher than mescaline.
Speaker 2: Not to mention toquila.
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, I mean, come on, totally yeah. But I
certainly understand, you know, the the motivation to protect it culturally.
I mean, this is a plant that's that's sacred to
Native people. You don't want you know what I call
the hanky shaman out there abusing it or selling it
or you know it. This is the thing that that's
culturally sensitive. I totally understand that. It'd be the you
know the same if someone was out there. You know,
I have a Catholic priest outfit that I sometimes put
on for live streams because I think it's funny. You
wouldn't you know? That'd be like I'm sure that offends
many Catholics. It would be like the same thing. There's
plenty of room uh for cultural uh you know, to
use the word cultural appropriation or or things will be
offensive to to a population to whom this plant's important.
I totally understand that.
Speaker 2: But it doesn't offensive offensive. Yes, but is that government's job.
Government's job is safety, right, definitely, to take it, to
take it back to safety. Like, let's just all throw
you one word? How about this Canada?
Speaker 1: So wait, hold on, I want to talk about that,
But what The point I wanted to make was that
the preserve it culturally is it seems at odds with
preserving it physically, like with actually conserving it, and especially
using a law that was created as part of a
culture war, and before that, which was created as a
result of a racist, a racist agenda against Native Americans.
I mean the early twentieth century, the late eighteen hundreds,
early nineteen hundreds, paid you know, there were many efforts
to criminalize payota use among Natives by you know, the
Anglo population, and it was all it was all racist intent.
It was they felt it interfered with you know, converting
them to Christianity, so you know, right, yeah.
Speaker 2: And kept them, kept them on a lower level of
existence in some cultural manner. But see, that's the thing
is like, I guess the reason I'm trying to get
to the safety thing because if it was really about safety,
by the way, then why did we carve out an
exemption for Native Americans? Is it that their safety is
less important? Well? Or is that they don't deserve equal
protection from dangerous substances.
Speaker 1: I think people know that, I mean unless you're When
I was an adjunct professor at SEUL Ross, there were
some people there who their main motivation for getting rid
of Martin Terry's dea licensed payoty collection was that they
thought it was dangerous. They thought the football team's going
to come in here, eat all of it and have
to be sent to the er, which is hilarious. And
also it's so Texas, like I could totally picture, you know,
some administrator in Texas. No offense to anybody imagining that
that's a reality and that Payote's dangerous. But I think
most people know payote is not dangerous. But this attempt
to culturally preserve it is what I'm concerned about. It
seems like this is some fear of it being appropriated
or further endangered if it's decriminalized. And that again comes
from this idea that you know, these Anglo drug bros
or whoever, are going to drive down to Texas hop
a fence, walk through thorn scrub and go around digging
this plant up when you can and purchase seeds of
it online for nothing.
Speaker 2: So that cultural sensitivity and the illogical idea that is
dangerous or like the two main harmful elements to the
species itself. I mean, it helps to identify that because
then you start seeing the multiple layers involved. So I
want to backtrack just for a second in terms of Arizona.
So you're right. So what it is is that Arizona
law has an exemption to where your possession and use
of piety is exempt from prosecution if it was being
used in a religious context. Whereas the state of Texas,
where the insitu work needs to take place, it's specifically
prohibited for you to possess paety for anything other than
to sell or as a licensed member of the Native
American church, buying it and transporting it out of it
and maybe using it within the state. But it is
specifically prohibited to cultivate it, transplant it, put it in
a pot, collect the seeds, plant the seeds. So there
is no religious exemption for conservation. It is not made
exempt in Texas. I just want to be specific.
Speaker 1: So the status called that it's set up for extinction
basically in Texas.
Speaker 2: Yes, it's a legal bias toward extinction. I've said this
for too many years. It is actually a legal bias
to create a trend, which, like I say, takes some
decades to see the effect of. You don't see it
in nineteen seventy. There's plenty around every time we go
buy it is cheap. I think when I first went
down it was like a maybe it went up to
one hundred and ten dollars after a couple of years
per thousand. And that sack of a thousand was not small.
Speaker 1: So eleven cent plant, eleven cents a button, yeah, and
these were.
Speaker 2: So now we're up to I don't know, seven, seven
hundred and fifty dollars for a very small sack of
small buttons.
Speaker 1: And these these are these are cuttings too. These are
cut buttons, which means the plant is still intact and
we'll re sprout. That's the other thing we forgot to
mention is that this, you know, cutting this plant harvesting
is a sustainable thing. If there is some guy growing
it in an apartment in Lansing, Michigan, he could very
well cut his own plant and it would re sprout
as long as he didn't like.
Speaker 2: Every time you cut. Every time you cut your plant,
you get new crowned so you're technically making more, but
only if it's done correctly. And it's not done correctly
in Texas because of the degradation of the the populations
these little ones that we buy. Now, I'll tell you, Joey,
for the most part, if I had to give you
a percentage, I would say that a good still have
their stem, their underground stem attached, because nobody's getting in
there on their hands and knees and just cutting off
the tops of these smaller ones. It's easier doing their
big and when they're right in front of you, But
the rest of them are kind of kind of root
hold up. You know, there's like a hoe, like a
little short handled plow kind of.
Speaker 1: Thing, because that's what's going inefficient. I guess it's you.
You're a Palo taro. You're sweating your ass off, you're
getting bit by mosquitos, covered in ticks and poked with
you know, thorny blackbrush, and you're just out there just
just whacking whatever. You know, who cares? Just getting the.
Speaker 2: Harvesting technique is partly you're blamed for this. And none
of those remain, None of those remain to make more,
those little ones like that. So what we do is
I purposefully sort out the little ones that come for
church use. And fortunately a lot of other Native American
church members take part in this kind of thing. They
select out the smaller ones with their whole stem intact,
rather than slicing them up for ceremonial use, because they'll
be big in just a few years and can be
then used for ceremonial use. And every time you cut them,
they make more. It just doesn't make sense to not
do it that way.
Speaker 1: Yeah, so you guys are purchasing. You guys are purchasing medicine.
It's all legal, all transported legally, all the paperwork bringing
it to Arizona, and then you use what you save
some for ceremony, and then the ones that are too
small you just root and make new plants.
Speaker 2: Yeah, we're forced to do that. There's no other source.
That's the crazy thing. It's like having one source for
your venison. It's all licensed by the same entity, and
there's no regulation into how it's hardested, whether properly or improperly.
I mean that is just like this technical aspect. It's like, yeah,
the hardesting technique itself is partially the source of the depletion.
Speaker 1: It's it's cool.
Speaker 2: Rather than rather than creating more, you see what I'm saying.
It's like very it's it's it right and there's more
or you cut it wrong, and there's less It's.
Speaker 1: It's crazy and it's unfortunate that Arizona law facilitates conservation
X city conservation and propagation at its plant, but the
place where it's native, the state where it's native, doesn't.
I mean, it's not even native. It's not even legal
for Native Americans to plant it. If there was a
Native American group that wanted to go purchase land and start,
you know, repopulating it with payote ceilings, they could not
legally do it unless they got a DEA permit like
I pc I did, et cetera. I mean, there's there's
no in South Texas is where it grows. Best's this
is there's.
Speaker 2: So many layer there's so many layers of the ill
logic that it's hard to get my mind around. And
I think about it all the time. Here's another goofy thing.
For example, you can be a Mexican in South Texas
and perfectly illegal, legally go and cut extremely certain threatened
plants and bring them back to the dude, and he
gives you money for them, and you go buy beer
and whatnot, and that's perfectly illegal. But you cannot eat
one of those you can't. Oh, that is a federal offense,
so law offense.
Speaker 1: So law also states that the payotos cannot consume what
they're harvesting, the Payotaro's and the dealers the license they.
Speaker 2: Can unless they can show what they call twenty five
percent Indian blood and be a member of the Native
American Church all at the same time. So that's three things.
You're a Mexican, you're an Indian, and you're a member
of a Native American church. And that species doesn't exist
too much down there, at least not among the people
that are picking the plants themselves. So it's it's just
as weird. It's there's so many layers that don't make sense,
is what we're kind of all talking about.
Speaker 1: Right. So the law, the law, the law is is
kind of putting the plant on track towards extinction, and
populations are rapidly declining. I've even heard, you know, botanists
in the state who possibly have some authority, you know,
mumbling about it being listed as an endangered species, which
I think is the worst, the worst thing you could
do in a state like Texas, because if you make
something an endangered species of plant in Texas, then it
now it becomes targeted, you know, and people will actively,
if it's on their land, will actively destroy it and
get rid of it because there's this fear that it
means the federal government's going to come in and take
your land. I think putting this not just terrible idea, But.
Speaker 2: There's not just that. There's also the element that if
you make it an endangered species, that directly conflicts with
the legal trade. Right, nobody in the Native American church
really wants to see all of a sudden that they
can't order medicine for their prayer ceremony.
Speaker 1: Right. There's this too. But then there's again the Native
American groups that want to petition to keep it. They
don't want it legalized, they don't want it decriminalized. And
this is what I wanted to get to. I think
it's I understand the motives, but I think it is
completely short sighted and illogical and further endangers the plant.
Can we talk about that a little bit? What's your
what's your opinions on that? I mean there have been
you know, Navajo Nation wrote uh, I don't know the
exact details. They wrote the federal government and basically petitioning
it to keep it illegal. You know, I totally believe
in cultural preservation, but this is not the way to
do it. This is not the way to do it.
I mean, And you brought up Canada, where it's legal
to grow, and let's talk about Canada. What's what's what's
the status of payote up there? It's totally illegal to grow,
but illegal to consume unless you're Native, right.
Speaker 2: Right? They have Native American church groups in Canada. So
people up there must purchase their medicine from Texas did
it ship to them? At the same time, Canadian laws
specifically states that you can grow, possess, share, sell the
plant itself. You're just not allowed to eat it for
drug purposes. So this goes back to that question of safety.
Does government have a compelling interest in regulating paote in
Canada because of safety issues? No, there is no safety
issue with the legal possession of parity in Canada. This
is this is just verified by time. And I actually, Joey,
you love this story. But I know a fella who
was arrested and put in prison in Canada for manufacture
I guess possibly distribution of LSD. And he decided as
his prison project, asked permission to grow paoty in the
prison greenhouse and was allowed to do so so.
Speaker 1: In jail.
Speaker 2: Yes, And so I'm saying this is the status in Canada.
I am blessed to spend part of my time there
with my Canadian wife and family. We have a home
there and we grow medicine there, and there's just no
issue with it. There's no issue with it. There is,
just isn't. And there's payoty growers and collectors just on
the west coast of Canada that I know personally that
I've met over time. It's not an issue. It's not
a drug issue, and nobody's getting stuff on peyote. There's
why through the mail you can you can buy the seed,
you can purchase a plant, grow it at home. And
so I guess what I'm coming to with this, Joey,
is that there's also no compelling interest in the United States.
It's a myth and and this is like, so we've
bushwhacked our way down to what you're talking about, which
is why there's a push to keep it illegal, and
why Native American church members themselves are oftentimes as individuals
and sometimes as organizations, making statements uh to keep it illegal.
I mean because we had to bushwhack our way there.
So there's all these layers, starting with the federal prejudices,
the cultural prejudices, the thing towards Christianization. I guess you
could say, away from native traditions.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I mean, that's obviously, you know, a partially a
way to hide it from or to or to to
to get it permitted among you know, the dominant culture
that's trying to suppress you, which is Christian. You know,
you inject the Christianity into it and at this point
that's basically part of it now. But that totally makes
sense too. But there's yeah, I mean, there's like, yeah,
like you were saying, we bushwhacked here, it was. There's
many layers. But the point is because we have a model.
We have a model for how it is, what happens
when it's legal someplace. We have a model in Canada.
It's not it's not an issue of safety. No one's
getting hurt by this. And also it's not an issue
of cultural disrespect because as far as I know, there's
not some big cult of Caucasian drug bros who are
engaging in the sale and trade of peyote for you know,
for drug use for consumption. It's not some there's not
been some rush as far as I know, by psychedelic
entrepreneurs on Canadian populations of this plant and cultivation that
would in any way disrespect you know, Native American churches
of it.
Speaker 2: So again, plant dorks, plant dorks are not your problem.
You know, Cacti bros aren't even your problem. As far
as I can tell. That's a good thing. Like let
a person get in love with nature. Man, I mean yeah,
I mean, how not dangerous can we possibly be talking
about here? I mean, it's not an issue in cannabis.
Speaker 1: Like the cannabis thing is an excellent example. I know
so many people who've ridden me, who you know, said, oh,
I got into your podcast because I was. I was
initially into cannabis, and now I'm into all these other things,
these other native plants. I'm you know, learning about science
and interested in all these elements of the natural world.
It's a it's a gateway, it really is towards towards
not just conservation and quote nature, but also towards science.
So I don't understand why there's this, you know, repetitive
and constant push to keep it illegal among among the
native groups down here. It's I understand, it's like this
gatekeeping thing. It's it's an emotional issue, but it seems
that directly conflicts with conservation of a plant who's becoming
with every passing year more endangered.
Speaker 2: Well, I have a lot of compassion for the emotion
of it, you know, I have a lot of emotion
about it. I confessed this to you earlier, Like I
do have a lot of emotion about it. And non
tribal people might not be able to easily recognize what
it feels like to have your traditions taken away within
your grandparents' generation. It feels different, you know, if you
were raised at a boarding school, taken away from your
family and tadd different ways to have a lot of
them about it. And so I get that we still
need to look for a logic in our arguments. So
you were at a ceremony with me in South Texas
and we had one of the thirteen Indigenous Grandmother Council
members there with us. We were so fortunate to have her.
She was happy to share her thoughts with us, and
I remember her in the morning and here we are
in a very meditation filled space, you know, trying to
have our minds and our hearts clear and be open
each other. And she went ahead and shared with us
how she didn't really look around at her reservation in
Oklahoma and see the problem could be with like other
than Native people trying to do something good. She even
cracked us up when she said something like, you know,
I look around sometimes I see these white people taking
care of things better than we do ourselves. She's like,
why can't we, you know, work together. Yeah, I remember saying,
and that kind of clarity, you know, she had to
cut through the emotion of it to like get this
recognition that this is what we're praying about. That's what
that ceremony was for, right, and so could we just
get clear about this, like let's it was almost like
she was saying, we needed the jettison some of our
opinionated emotions. And I have to do the same thing.
Like I get on the Instagram and you know, I
see and I get contacted by different cact dibros and stuff,
and sometimes I wonder, like, you know, it's beautiful what
you're doing, but you do have to realize that you
are kind of like a thorn in the side of
some people when you're coming onto this like it's your
privilege somehow. Well, not everybody's had that privilege. Like a
lot of people, you know in inquisition days died about this.
You know a lot of people in our timeline went
to jail for this, or or got ostracized for this,
or lost their jobs for this.
Speaker 1: There's been a war against Peyote for five suspense got
here since the spear.
Speaker 2: Social pressure not to be one of those people. I
guess even in my own life, brother, I you know,
I've seen a couple of jails in a Mexican prison
over my own activities and beliefs. I was arrested with
a little film canisterer half full of seeds I had collected,
and they told me and that ago it was popping
sceeds and I was going to do twenty seven years
in their whole prison.
Speaker 1: You were in jail with the weechos, right.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and uh, it's not uncommon. So I guess I'm
just saying like, yeah, there's a lot involved here on
personal levels, Like all of us, every one of us
that really believes somehow in the goodness of this plant.
We can tell our stories of how it's just not
like a game like your life is involved. I in
the United States, I was once charged with child endangerment
for having a peety planter a garden in my living
room in front of the sun window that my kids
grew up with, and I grew.
Speaker 1: Up this was it. I mean, this is an and
your native American.
Speaker 2: And they were still, well, I'm a Mexican, brother, I'm
a I'm a Native American manufactured with parts made in my.
Speaker 1: It look pretty indigenous to me. I mean, and I
don't know, I I'm kind of surprised, well that surprise,
but still, I mean, this is nineties, right, This was
a big deal. Was this nineties or late eighties? You
remember you tell me about this before? This was an
Arizona right, oh, in the early nineties.
Speaker 2: And I just point that out because like my kids
were raising the desert with rattlesnakes outside. I used to
have to haul them off, you know, keep them away
from the place, and you know, learning about which how
walk in the desert without getting hurt. And here they
were telling me I was endareting my kids by having
this beautiful garden with flowers you know that we could
see every morning. So what I did was at that time.
You know, I'm a bit of a maniac when I
have to be. I got a hold of the Department
of Poison Control in Texas specifically, you know, started in
South Texas but ended up with somebody I think in
Austin somewhere, and they were like, what, that's ridiculous charging
with child endangerment. They maintained that they had no record
ever of anybody in South Tape, Texas, any child ever
being poisoned by the peoty that grows around there, you know,
and and it is kind of omnipresent in a lot
of people's world when you live out there. And I'm
just pointing that out, and I was like, this has
never been this thing to where we're like, hey man,
this this is awesome. Everybody gets some payoty and la
la la lah No. We we have a personal relationship
with the plant that is important to us. And I
guess so I'm just trying to explain that the emotion
that goes with it is very understandable, and that's why
the squeeze comes. Like politically, there's certain organizations that the
file briefs to whatever you might call it, with these
jurisdictional bodies that are trying to pass and D crime law,
saying please don't decriminalized peuty. We're very sensitive about this,
you know, we haven't been consulted, whatever it might be.
And then one time I saw something that really did
kind of make sense about this to me, and that
was that I believe it's probably still somewhere in their
website and their documents that the Indigenous Peoty Conservation UH
Protection Initiative, the IPCI asked a certain jurisdiction I can't
remember which to just not use the word peuty in
their D crime laws. Now, that kind of made sense
to me, like, let's not bring that up.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I get on board with that.
Speaker 2: I can get on board with that. That makes sense
to me. Somehow. You're not waving a flag it, you're
not saying we don't care how you feel about it.
If you're going to make plants legal, make plants legal,
but let's not get into all this hair splitting, because
it's not going to make it any better realistically.
Speaker 1: So there's this very understandable emotional certainly urged to protect this,
and I think anybody with any sense about them can
understand that. How do you think you convince people that
want to but at the same time, before we even
get into that, but at the same time, this urge
to protect it might be might have adverse effects that
actually affect physical populations of the plant and effect negatively
affect its conservation. How do you convince people that want
to keep it illegal for cultural reasons to see that
one there's a different there's another way to protect their
culturally that doesn't include, you know, making it illegal to
grow or work with for restoration and conservation, and at
the same time get them to see the conservation does
need to happen. In order for it to happen, some
of these roadblocks have to be removed.
Speaker 2: Well, I've considered it a lot. How do you convince
some I think, honestly, there's really one way, and it
takes a little bit of time. And the way it
is is that you set an example that you actually
are able to provide beautiful, healthy plants for sacramental use
through conservation. I believe that the day that you can
have a peety ceremony, which that day or that night specifically,
is not that far away. Really, that you can have
a peuty ceremony with plants that were not moved sideways
from somewhere else, in other words, transplanted from somewhere, grown
somewhere else, and harvested. But we're actually grown from seeds.
The day you can in the night that you can
have a paety ceremony with plants grown from seeds that
didn't have to deplete the population in Texas by law,
it's like a force depletion. Then you start showing how
to do it right. I don't really see any other
alternative way of explaining it. Fully, it actually has to
be exemplified.
Speaker 1: I think it would have to be. It have to
be a native led organization too. You're not going to
get a bunch of you know, pasties, You're not going
to get a bunch of Anglos doing it. I mean
that goes without saying.
Speaker 2: There are there are some people of all colors trying
to help.
Speaker 1: I mean, everybody should be trying to help. But in
terms of convincing the people who need convincing, it's going
to have to be some one from within. It's going
to have to be a cadre of people from within.
Speaker 2: You know, well that that is probably true, that is
the reality, and that's why we're a native led organization.
Myself personally, I'll start with that I'm doing it for
the plant's sake, But our organization has this other consideration
in that the Native American Church depends on a supply
of payety to continue. So we just have to be
realistic and say, okay, as members of the Native American Church,
we can at least plant the seed to set the
example that it doesn't have to be called from a
threatened population. It can be regenerated from seed and then
harvested sustainably, so you don't always have to have more
and more. You don't always have to be opening up
a new ranch to go in and pick the few
that are left there. It doesn't have to be an
extracted process, is the point. It can be a regenerative harvest.
I almost, Joey, don't really see any alternative. If you
run up the timetable twenty twenty five years, Yeah, what
are we going to do? Then? I really don't see it.
I don't see anybody that does.
Speaker 1: With a few exceptions, and I think I think, I
think place. I think location is important too. And this
is going to end up sounding like a damn promotional
for Morning Star, which I did not which I did
not mean to do, but you guys are the only
one doing this. I mean location. What I was gonna
say is location is important, and and there's so many
impediments in Texas where where payote's legal, where payote grows,
there's so many impediments towards doing something like that here.
But a few states over in a somewhat similar climate,
the impediments are far less. And so it makes things
like X sit to conservation, you know, conserving things out
of their native range, but as a means of growing
their population. The situation in Arizona is more amenable to that,
and so.
Speaker 2: Well, yeah, and not only that, but if you think
about the farm to fort concept, there's no exact percentage,
but a large percentage of the peuty that is distributed
from South Texas for Native American church use is consumed
in Arizona. I mean it's a pretty hefty percentage of it.
I have literally thumbed through the receipt books down there,
and you can see like lots of Northern Arizona Navajo Reservation,
southern Arizona. You know, I'm just saying it makes sense
on other levels as well, that you would have a
source where the medicine is being consumed. That doesn't require
you to literally be poaching payote from populations that are
already extremely minimized. It just doesn't make sense.
Speaker 1: Payote can be grown in the ground in southern Arizona
as well. I mean, it doesn't occur in the United
States anywhere but Texas. I hear people say I saw
some in New Mexico. It's no, no, you didn't. You
didn't see it there. It does. It's not native. I
saw some in Arizona. You know you didn't, not unless
it was planted. But it will grow fine in the
volcanic soils. Even though it's only native to limestone in Texas.
It will grow fine on the volcanic soils in the
ground in southern Arizona. So that's another thing. I'm like,
why was nobody doing this until now? But that's what
you guys are hoping to do.
Speaker 2: Well, we've kind of been doing it. You and I
both visited a something like a twenty seven year old
garden together down here. It's been being done on I guess,
like a kind of micro level. I think I would
be the exemption to that. At some point I had
an outdoor garden of many thousand plants just just thriving
under the mesquite trees out here. It does quite well
in Tucson.
Speaker 1: Where was it, Oh.
Speaker 2: Just north of Tucson and the heel of River Valley.
There's a lot of limestone ground out there, you know,
along the river. And yeah, the medicine tends to thrive
just planted in the ground. I call it natural culture
because it's totally natural. It's with the desert rains. We
get a very similar average rainfall. Well actually a little
bit more rainfall than the pearity populations of West Texas
do out here. Yeah, most years we get like two
or three more annual inches, you know than like Presidio
for example.
Speaker 1: The population that that you and I saw in southern
Arizona was on a reservation and that was I mean,
those were incredibly healthy plants. I was so surprised that
it was such an eye opener for me, and it
kind of hit home harder too. I was like, why
what someone needs to be doing this? I mean, they
this is amazing, Like this is they don't They're they're fine.
Like it's a different climate, you guys get. I mean
it's more similar to West Texas again, but still I
mean it's from South Texas. It's totally different. I mean,
it's chili. It doesn't really get that chili down here.
Uh you know. But these plants were thriving, they were fine.
They were massive clumps. I mean they looked like some
of the populations you see in Mexico. And it was
only thirty years old. Could you tell us about that
garden without naming who it was? Obviously, but but you
know it was a someone who's permitted to use it
and grow it. But how how did that start? I mean,
you you what's the history of that garden? Because it's
it's a real great example of what can be done
for anybody living in southern Arizona. I advise you to
I advise you to do it. But these I mean,
how what do those plants look like when it started.
Speaker 2: Well, it was a small handful of medium sized plants,
probably nothing more than silver dollar size, honestly, probably still
had some underground stem attached to it.
Speaker 1: They're like grapefruit size. Now that's crazy, and there's huge
clumps of like twenty grapefruits.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and I could go back to the year, but
it was probably something like the late eighties. I believe
it was now like twenty nine, almost thirty years ago, so,
and I've been involved in beauty conservation since nineteen eighty two.
So through the years I've made a lot of relations
amongst the local tribal people. And back in the day,
the concept was just a little bit out there, like
all they knew me as was like this plant dork,
kind of stoner looking Chicano dude. Right, But I loved
this plant so much that I would go around giving
my plants away to native people who wanted to take
care of it. And you know, I'm not saying every
garden succeeded. I put in a few on certain reservations
in myself at the request of the of the people,
and not all of them really took kind of depends
a little bit on the particular environment. But this one
in southern Arizona, this man took the plants. We talked
about where to put him, We set the few in
the ground, and that started his collection. And since then,
every time he'd go to Texas and purchased more plants,
he'd put a few more in. So that garden expanded
and they were like, weren't they like just about the
bigger ones almost grapefruit size at that point. Definitely naval org.
Speaker 1: I mean, yeah, I've got photos.
Speaker 2: I was.
Speaker 1: I mean, I see peyote all the time at our
conservation property when I'm out doing surveys. It's not you know,
it's nothing new to me. And I was impressed. I
mean I remember seeing like these look like some of
the wild populations you see in West Texas, you know,
or southern Mexico or Central Mexico and northern Mexico. I
guess where it's you know, you see large clumps of these.
I mean it was impressive. I mean, especially only being
thirty years old, and so he was just I mean,
and this man is not a botanist, he's not a horticulturalist.
He just was he could, but he was still able
to do this. He would just take what was he doing,
taking you know, cut buttons, rooting them and then putting
them in the ground, or what was he doing.
Speaker 2: I think he was just rooting them in the ground.
Speaker 1: Just putting the buttons in the ground and letting right right.
Speaker 2: That's what I've done here. I've brought him back from
Texas and just stuck them in the ground with no
actual roots. You've got the stem right, but you don't
have like the finer roots on them anymore. They just
dry and fall off and transport, right. So you just
stick them in the ground and with the desert rains,
they root all on their own and thrive. They're very adaptable.
After two or three years of our chili winter mornings,
you know, I can see like their their look even
changes a little bit. They get that grayer green look.
Speaker 1: Wax and that wax on the on the epidermis.
Speaker 2: Yeah, they get a little bit tougher looking, and they
start to handle the cold winter mornings just fine. I
mean I have actually seen them under the mesquites flowering
in the month of December for example. Wow, So they're
not suffering out here at all.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I was. It was cool at that at that
at that gentleman's house, they were growing under kreosode, I mean,
clumps just thriving under kreosode. And the look is much
different than you know, like the plants that morning Star
has in the greenhouse there that you're growing. How many
which we should talk about to how many plants do
you have in that greenhouse? Now?
Speaker 2: Oh gosh, it's not a small number.
Speaker 1: Five thousand Oh no, it's more than that.
Speaker 2: It's between that and you know, honestly, it might be
up to thirty thousand when you include all the seedlings
and thirty we have mother plants and seedlings and everything
in between. I have some sprouting probably today. So a
specific number.
Speaker 1: All the time your Instagram, which is peyoti lorex everybody
on Instagram, and uh, and you're always collecting seed. You're
always collecting fruits. And each fruit is what like a
five to ten seeds in it? What do you think
or seeds? How many?
Speaker 2: Yeah, the smaller fruits on the smaller plants will give
like five, but you know a lot of the larger
plants will give twenty per fruit, sometimes a little more
than twenty.
Speaker 1: So you, guys, so there's a green You guys have
a greenhouse with upwards of potentially thirty thousand plants you're
growing from seed. You've got the seed starting room, and
then you've got an actual greenhouse where you're you're growing
these in the original like what's the eventional plant the
eventual plan for all of these plants to put them
back in the ground somewhere, to get to have some
sort of established garden or what Yeah.
Speaker 2: So the collection that we have is a mixed collection
from different localities, right, seed from different areas, something like
seven different Mexican states and I think five Texas counties.
So we're not looking at trying to necessary early repatriate
or rematriate ah natural environments with this collection as a collection.
Like let's just say there was a repatriation program in
South Texas. Yeah, we've got seeds from Star County. Let's
just say there was one somewhere in San Luis. Yeah,
we've got some seeds from those locales. You mean, really,
when you.
Speaker 1: Say repatriation of it, you mean you're getting You're just
getting seeds from these areas or what I'm saying.
Speaker 2: If plants ever go back to the wild, that's not
necessarily the value. The main value, it's the election we
have here.
Speaker 1: It's not legally possible. And also, I mean we've already
established that the plants aren't safe in Texas.
Speaker 2: Basically who knows when you could do it. So the
real value of this collection is that it is a
genetic repository of different localities of Lafafa, and so I
see the future potential of it being this that it
continues to grow in the USDA Zone nine, you know,
warmer desert of southern Arizona as a collection. And yeah,
there's separation between varieties just physically on outdoor land, but
we're not trying to maintain genetic purity. What we're trying
to do is supplement the Native American Church needs in
southern Arizona.
Speaker 1: You're trying to turn this more in the bathtub.
Speaker 2: So that less has to be harvested in South Texas.
That's the short of it.
Speaker 1: But the plant is I mean the plan for you
guys to get them in the ground eventually, right, because
I mean they just the plants. Just do any plant
that's so much better in the ground post.
Speaker 2: Some of them are already in the ground, but we're looking
for a larger, more permanent location to do that perpetually. Yes, Uh,
we're looking. We're actively looking also raising funds and uh,
we see this collection as a very valuable asset to
the Native American Church in southern Arizona. And so that
is the plan. And and how you do that has
been the question. Like we're not licensed distributors as such,
we're just conservationists. So what I'm looking at is setting
up a prototype of what we're calling a sacramental sponsorship.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I was going to ask I was going to
ask you if this is so, if these are being
grown next sit do for for native use? Yeah? How
do you? How do you get them out there to natives?
Speaker 2: So we want it to be their own project in
a sense, although not every teepee ground or reservation has
a desire or capacity to up their own situation, what
they can do is sponsor the plants that already exist.
In other words, they join a program where we maintain
a set of a thousand plants for them. The idea
is that over a ten year period, you'll be able
to harvest from those thousand plants for them. That's the
term of the program. It's in ten year segments really,
and the reason it's ten years is because we're giving
the plants a minimum of five years to grow from
seed before they ever get harvested. Most of them will
be older than that when harvested. But it's a sponsorship
program that Native American church chapters can join, and it's
almost like a friend of mine called it pearity insurance
to where as a sponsor, you know that over a
period of five years, you're going to get two hundred
large Payote crowns per a year for your ceremonial use.
So I'm looking at this as something of a math problem.
If we don't have a realistic plant and we don't
know where future parody is going to come from, we
better start doing some math. So the way we're looking
at it, one thousand plants that are properly cut instead
of one thousand plants less being in the world. At
the end of that, there's going to be at least
one thousand plants more created because when you properly cut paoty,
it creates more. So this is the idea behind sponsorship,
that you sponsor one thousand plants that are ethically harvested,
sustainably grown, and at the end of that there's actually
more and you can re up for another ten years.
So this is kind of a realistic, somewhat long term
investment in parity's future that we can see that makes sense.
It's what we can do. We can't save the ecology
of South Texas. We can't make it okay, we can't
change the laws necessarily, especially not right away. But if
we don't start planting seeds for the future now, there
is no future. That's the crux of the matter. We're
stuck between time and scarcity, so we can't do nothing.
Speaker 1: So that's again it's ext to do conservation. It's the
same thing that was done with the California condors and
is actively occurring with many other endangered plants and animals.
It's a way of growing the population and trying to
stem the tide of population decline that's hitting the species,
both in the US and in Mexico. And I wanted
to mention too that I think the thing that's interesting,
and I see this with all the native plants anywhere
I go, is that, especially in extreme climates like you
see in Texas or in the American Southwest, is that
the native plants and cultivation many times look much healthier
and more robust than some of the plants you might
see in habitat you know, where they're in habitat where
they're getting hit by prolonged drought, climate change related weather issues,
howter summers, I mean, you know, the climate change I mean,
christ Man, Like I was just in Chicago, they don't
even really get harsh winters anymore. And so but in
a cultivated setting, the native plants can be cared for.
They can be stewarded, They can be attended to if
something looks like something's being hit. You know, if plants
look like they're being hit by a fungal infection, or
there's an insect or or there's a rabbits or something,
they can be you know, measures can then be taken
to protect them against that. They can also be watered.
They can be given supplemental watering if needed if it's
an especially long drought, because I mean, Payot's really really
drought resists, and obviously it's a cactus. But they can
still I mean, it can still take a toll on them.
It can slow growth rate, it can set them back,
it can make the plants more prone to diseases, to
insect their fungal pests. So, I mean there's a lot
to be said there for crew. But at the same time,
it's in the ground, so there's a lot to be
said there for this method you're proposing of preserving it
exit to putting it in the ground and also being
able to stewart it, nurture it and care for it
and pay attention to it.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I don't think it's just a good idea. I
think it's necessary. That's where I get emotional about it.
I'm not just playing around like sixty some years old.
I'd really like to see something positive happen here. I
think it's so blessed throughout my life by this little plant. Yeah,
and my love for it. It's just I can't even
describe it.
Speaker 1: I mean, I think it's necessarily. It's like like the way.
Speaker 2: You feel about the way you feel about a child,
or your your favorite dog or from your childhood. You know,
that's kind of like the relationship I have with this
little plant. So it puts this whole weight on it
for me where I just want to see something could happen.
And the only way I know how to do it is,
like I say, to do what we can do. It's
very limited, but you can do what's in front of you.
And what I can do is I can handpullin eight
flowers every day, I can collect the seeds, I can
replant those seeds and at least something's happening, so you know,
and like you say, it's straight up conservation at that point,
based out of love, you know, built with prayer. There's
been a lot of prayers about this, so it's weird
that with these other plants like that, or species like
the condor or bison, or any endangered species very rarely.
I'm trying to think of an exception to this. Is
there a legal trade in the species at the same time.
So that's the weird thing about the multiple impact of
pressure on this spe Yeah, yeah, you're selling it at
the same time. You know. The last time they kept
records I think was in twenty sixteen, and the quantity
of payote, or at least that they made records available publicly,
was twenty sixteen. That was the last year, I believe,
and the number at that year was still around a
million plants per year being sold legally, right, and it
had peaked at just under two million for a few
years when that could still be done. I imagine that
if you look at the graph now, it would be
a downslide because there's just yeah, I've seen that available.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I've seen that graph based on Texas Department of
Public Safety records, and you can already see I mean again,
they stop they stopped taking take collecting data in twenty sixteen,
but even then, prior to that, you could see a
you know, a very visible and ridiculous downward trend. Yeah.
Speaker 2: Right, And so I'm just saying most other species, unless
it's like hunting or something else killing it off, it
doesn't have that artificial pressure on it. It probably does
have some artificial pressures, but not a commercial trade of
a million of those poor guys every year.
Speaker 1: Yeah, it's that's crazy. It's like a I mean, it's
a it's like a crop demand. It is. It's a
crop demand, but there's nobody farming it.
Speaker 2: So that's what people don't really always recognize about the
whole payudia issue. Yeah, it's a schedule on drug. Hippies
used to try to have it and blah blah blah,
Beavis and Butt had found it in their big venture
or whatever it is. It's like a cultural thing, but
the reality of it is even weirder than any of
our cultural war like just the craziness of it. Like,
let me just say this, because again we're not even
you got to look at all the squares on the
chess board sometimes just get perspective, right, So this whole
thing of how like anybody pretty much like myself, we
can go down there and get a little card from
the distributor who's license and that makes us license to
go out on this land that the man has bought
a lease for. You go out there and you pick
it all day long. You find as many as you can,
you bring it back. He gives you money, cash money,
but you better not have eaten one that day. Another
tangent to that is that that whole thing about can
we just openly talk about, for like at least a minute,
about how weird it is that the federal government can
tell you what race you have to be or what
church you have to be a member of to do anything.
Speaker 1: Yeah, it's I think that is a really it's weird.
Speaker 2: I just want to say that we're not looking at
everything if we don't look at how weird that is too.
So there's so much weirdness about it that you almost
it's hard to get in there and talk about it.
And that's what you and I have been trying to
do here write like I say, doing some weed wacket. Well,
I think you get to like what really is going on?
Speaker 1: I think, well, yeah, and I think it's hard to
because it's I mean, it took me years to understand
the situation down here with Peyotero's with who's is there
actually poaching going on? How much of how much of
it is like you know, drug bro meat heads on Facebook,
market place, how much of it? You know, what's going
on with the native element of it. I mean, you know,
people like families will come down to purchase medicine. Some
might go poaching too sometimes, you know, hoping fences with
buckets and cutting you know, where does this It took
me a while to understand it's so it's not there's
not a lot of knowledge out there, and again it's
all tainted by the drug war aspect. I mean, I
think you make something taboo and you increase demand for
it when you make it illegal. Sam Pedro, I mean,
there's so many plants that are psychoactive that are illegal,
and there's not a lot of people outside of a
very very small minority who learned about it on the
internet and also have the desire to use them, who
are out using them. And I think would be the
same way with peyote, Like it's it tastes like hell,
it's no offense of the plants. It causes stomach upset,
it causes vomiting, and a lot of people it's but it,
you know, but mushrooms are very easy to get for
a somewhat similar effect. I don't think, you know, if
it were legal or decriminalized, there's going to be this
massive rush by non native users to descend on this
plant and try to ingest it or try it out
or use it. I just don't think that's the reality.
Speaker 2: Well, oh man, it's so weird, Like, hang on, one
more weirdness. So in the state of Texas, let's say
you're a Native American church member, but you're not a
federally registered Indian as the law says. That means all
of a sudden, your use paity is illegal. Or if
you're a Native American who's not a member of the
Native American Church, your use is also illegal. Like when
you start splitting hairs on the logic here, it's almost infinite.
And then the other aspect of this is, so we've
out like what heroin, fentanyl, cocaine, all these things on
scheduled one that are highly illegal, right, federal crimes. How
well have we eliminated these things by doing that? If
we don't look at that part of it. How what
you just mentioned, Joe, that we make all these laws
and it almost increases intrigues. I think a variation of
what they call the streisand effect, you know.
Speaker 1: Well, yeah, and then there's the black market effect too,
of course, I mean there's.
Speaker 2: So the demand increases at that point, distribution will follow.
And you just look at the urban streets and you
see the amount of opiates that are afflicting our society. Dude,
oh my god.
Speaker 1: Wild. And at the same time, you know, people law
abiding citizens and posizens are otherwise law abiding, like some
old lady who wants to grow a because she collects cactus,
and this is an actual thing. I mean, I've seen this.
I've seen a number of just like old like three
or four of people I know that are women in
their sixties seventies who just grow a ton of cactus
but are afraid to grow peyote because it's illegal to
possess and they have no interest in using it. They're
not they don't use any drugs, they're not drug people,
but they don't they can't grow it, and if they could,
they could be growing a ton of it, you know,
they grow a ton of other rare cactus species and
do really well by it, you know, and increase the population,
but they can't do that with lafafa because it's illegal.
I mean, it's just it's it's a wild it's wild
that it's still illegal, and it's wild that there's still
a push to keep it that way when it's it's
still threatened.
Speaker 2: Well, i'd like to say that, like regarding that whole
Fennel thing two, Like, the reason we have that problem
is because of the Controlled Substances Act. Because we squose
out all the you know, whatever you want to call it,
former opium trade and drove it down to this highly
lethal substance which now contaminates most classes of recreational drugs, and.
Speaker 1: It is easier to transport because it's so much impotent too.
Speaker 2: In other words, the Act itself made the problem worse.
You've got to look at that.
Speaker 1: Yeah, Yeah, and it's I think that's I mean, that's
what the drug work does. That's why it that's why
it's failed. I was on the cultural aspect, though, I
do want to mention, you know, I was at the
the I got invited to speak at the Oklahoma City
Fungus Fair last fall, and I I have a you know,
a drawing of Payoty I did that. I was selling
for for Thorn Scrubs Sanctuary for our conservation property or nonprofit.
And you know, I had a number of people come
up to me who are Native who said, oh, I
know it that plant is. Do you have any more
of this this drawing or do you have a you know,
any other sizes of this shirt available with the shirt
with the peyote image on it?
Speaker 2: You know?
Speaker 1: I said no, I'm sorry, I don't, But you know,
how do you Obviously you go to South Texas, like
you've gone to meetings and ceremonies, and they were all
because they were native, and they were all like, yes,
you know, I've we go to Miranda City, we go
to wherever. And for me, that especially was you know,
I mean, I'm I'm seven hundred miles away from the
wild habitat of this species, and I could see It's
obvious to me how important it is to people all
over the United States, I mean all over the world.
Really yeah, and it's it's nuts. And at the same time,
I know how endangered it is. I mean, I've seen
populations of it bulldozed and destroyed. I've seen areas where
I know it grows leveled to make way for solar
farms and border walls, and it's it is. It's like
washing a bucket drain when no one's turning on the
spigot above it.
Speaker 2: And at the same time, there's a lot of hope.
You know. I've been in New York City, walked into
a commercial establishment and found a beautiful pot of flowering
pot growing in their windows.
Speaker 1: You know.
Speaker 2: Where I live. I'm a very short desert hike away
from an airbnb, which is really nice set up in
the desert, And when you get there, the first thing
that you don't notice is about fifty beautiful payoti plants
mixed among you know, the desert cacti that they've landscaped
with at the airbnb.
Speaker 1: Wow, that's cool. It's pretty nice. And nobody gangs them.
Speaker 2: Nobody takes obviously somebody there's a lot, but nobody cares
at the same time. Yeah, and so this is like
the iron because everything we've talked about all this bs
like politics, legislation and like legal bias towards extinction and
like really like fearful. The only word is fuckery. That
happened from the War on drugs, you know, and the
hippie craze and the ramifications of the acid age, when
everything was about you know, tune in, turn on, and
drop out. You know, we had a natural reaction to that.
But you know what, Peuty, it doesn't care. It's just
this beautiful little plant that wants to grow. So it's
almost like I look at it and I'm like, is
everybody not seeing what I'm seeing? I'm out of my
greenhouse hours of day, Joey, when I can't be just
looking at the plans. For God's sake. People have asked me.
They've actually asked me this, Hey, how much do I
need to eat? I'm like, eat, do you really need
to eat any of this? Hands off? You know, I mean,
you're fine, right.
Speaker 1: And that's the thing too, is would they be asking
that question if it wasn't a schedule one, if there
wasn't this whole, this this gestalt around it being taboo,
of it being illegal, of it being a drug. I mean,
there would be no I think there would be such
a smaller population of people that was trying to abuse it.
Speaker 2: There's like a salacious, salacious, like sexy mystos about it, right,
instead of just being oh, yeah, it's a beautiful plant,
good for you, because that's like I say, how it
is in Canada.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I can imagine. I mean, that's the example, right
there is Canada. Look at Canada. What's going on? Nothing? Nothing,
It's fine, it's legal, and it's fine. Who you know.
I just but at the same time, the very negative
effects of keeping it illegal are that it becomes further
in danger. I mean, I've repeated this like five times,
and I apologize, but it's there's a lot of a
lot of cons and not many pros. So again I.
Speaker 2: Well then and I question whether there's any solution, right,
just you know, pragmatically speaking, And so that's why I
bring up this sponsorship program, because we're really serious about
the fact that we're stewarding already the basis of this
kind of concept.
Speaker 3: Well, that's that is not yothetical, it's a solution pathetical
we need.
Speaker 1: I mean, well, the plant needs, you know, one hundred
more organizations doing that around the United States and in Canada.
Speaker 2: I mean it's well, it needs at least one, you know.
Speaker 1: It does at least one at least well, that's all
there is right now, and thank God for that. So
sacramental sponsorship program. I'll put a link to the PDF
that you prepared in the podcast episodes, so people can
and see it for themselves. It's got air and force,
its painting.
Speaker 2: It's not an answer, but it's a it's the genesis
of a solution, right, So, like you got to start
with a C and I'm just like looking at it
like that. I'm like, well, unless you come up with
it at least one reasonable proposal that works both ethically,
horticulturally and I guess chronologically right, and even financially. By
the way, because you know that that chart we discussed
about the decline of Payot's availability, that same chart shows
you the price. So there's like an X and the
trending upward tangent is the price goes up correspondingly. And
so I'm looking at what are we doing in twenty years?
How many of us can even afford it now? If
it's a matter of money, and it shouldn't just be
a matter of money, that's what we're trying to say.
So it's going to cost us to make that happen,
but it can't just be a commodity. So yeah, that's
partly what's.
Speaker 1: So you guys, really, I mean, what you need now
is to get you know, to get land, to get
a place to plant, and then Meanwhile, you're just keeping
growing ceilings. What I mean, I guess you can take
some of those plants out of the greenhouse, you know,
as spring approaches in southern Arizona. What's the plan? I mean,
you guys running you guys running out of space in
the greenhouse yet or what?
Speaker 2: Well? Fortunately we're very close to that, yes, yeah, and
I'm happy that that's the case. Yeah, we're really in
need of funding because we need to move on to
Phase B. Phase A has been a success, and that
was that we increase the supply and the foot space
for that. Fortunately right now is fifty by one hundred feet.
Speaker 1: And Phase B is planting. Phase A, Phase B is
planting right.
Speaker 2: Phase is getting them to where they exist. Phase B
is making sure they can continue to exist because at
that point you harvest them properly, and there's always more,
so you're always making more. So even what we have
is a good start because the math works in our
favorite toward the future.
Speaker 1: And so it's what can people do if they want
to help out? They can donate. You guys are a
five oh one c three nonprofit. What can they do?
Morningstar Conservancy dot org? What else? Follow you on Instagram?
Speaker 2: A lot of people. A lot of people are helping.
If you're a multimillionaire, just god a morning Star Conservancy
dot org, and it's pretty easy to find out how
to help us. But just regular people, uh are also
able to help us monthly. A lot of people choose
to do that and that does keep the lights on
here and it keeps the fan on in the greenhouse temporarily.
But we do need a boost to get from phase
A to Phase B. Like I say, there's a lot
of little babies that are ready to live on their own.
Speaker 1: Do you guys have a go fundme? Like? Is there
a way that people can donate strictly for land purchase,
Like they can throw twenty bucks in the pot and
you know know that this is going to go strictly
for purchasing land.
Speaker 2: Yeah, we're in the process of setting up a separate
account strictly for land. Right now, we're just operating from
a general budget. But there's definitely ways to donate on
Morningstarconservancy dot org for sure. I think there's multiple ways
we're happy to help. There's contacts there. We're always happy
to talk. I myself talk to people half today about
such things so we can really use the help. It's
not because we want to save the world. We just
want to make sure that something gets done that can
be learned from, can be some benefit to the Native
American Church and to the species itself, and then can
be replicated for reels and maybe our children will do that. Now.
Speaker 1: You guys are all about teaching people too. I mean,
you know, yeah, we have workshops here knowledge.
Speaker 2: Uh yeah, we got stuff going on. We share our
knowledge as much as we can. And there are several
new Native American Church gardens around the country based from
what they've learned here quite literally physically being here for
a workshop and learning to plant their own seeds and
what to do from there.
Speaker 1: And you guys have news like announcements of workshops you'll
be holding on the website, like if people end up
passing through Tucson, I want to attend one.
Speaker 2: Yeah, staying in touch with us. We always make arrangements
for people, whether it's a officially scheduled or not, we
always make arrangements for people who want to help. And
you know, obviously I'm happy to blah blah blah about it.
I do all the time, but you know, it's a passion,
it's hard to shut off.
Speaker 1: We should talk about the sponsor, the sponsor membership, the
Sacramento Sponsorship program. So it's the price for that for
Native American church members. One thousand dollars donation at entry
into the program, which covers ten years sponsorship. First five
years the plants are growing. Last five years, they can
have an annual harvest. A sponsor can receive an annual harvest.
Anything else you want to throw in there or.
Speaker 2: What, Yeah, we got what I guess you might call
two tier sponsorship program. One is if you're a Native
American church chapter proper, then the medicine goes directly to
your chapter. Everything's all covered that way. If you're not
a Native American church chapter, we have an associate membership,
which is where you sponsor a thousand plants for a
Native American church chapter. And you need to know that
I've never seen a rich Native American church chapter. We're
all struggling. We all have a tiny budget that comes
in from membership donations to buy medicine, to buy a tepee,
to keep the place up. It's not easy. So somebody
who's not even a Native American church member or even
living in this country can go ahead and do their
own associate sponsorship that way, and then we agree to
a designated Native American Church chapter which becomes the beneficiary
of the program. So, like I say, it's a little
like paeoty insurance for an NAC group.
Speaker 1: But the money is also going directly towards growing more
plants and protecting cultural sacrament and protecting Native American culture
and fostering and nurturing Native American culture. And uh and
I mean again, the plants get harvested, but they're still alive,
and we'll just regrow new heads. So all this money
is going towards active conservation, conservation and propagation as well
as you know, the cultural benefits of it as well.
It seems like a pretty wonderful.
Speaker 2: Yeah, the contributions go directly towards sanctuary keeping, then that's it.
Uh So, yeah, it's a direct benefit.
Speaker 1: And I've seen you, I've.
Speaker 2: Seen every donation that comes in. I am literally so
you know, putting into cultivation supplies.
Speaker 1: I was gonna say, I was gonna say, I know you, Leo,
and I know I know how you live. You live
very frugally. You're not out there, You're not out there
like buying Gucci sunglasses. You're not going to be, you know,
enriching yourself. But I've seen how you live.
Speaker 2: You know, you like wa an since over here.
Speaker 1: It around in sandals with a satchel, you know, driving
a driving a very small car whose tire we had
to repair. I don't know how we did that either.
We were coming. Oh that was the Watermen mountains, wasn't it.
Speaker 2: It was so much fun hunting that elephant tree with you.
Speaker 1: All right, But the tire got destroyed. I do remember that.
I was gonna say, I don't know how the tire
got shredded, but then I.
Speaker 2: Ah, it was I needed you tires. Let's just face.
Speaker 1: Well, it was the ballast that rough limestone of that
mountain range too.
Speaker 2: But anyway, limestone will put a hole in your shoes.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I'll put a I'll put the Sacramento sponsorship link
up into uh into the podcast description, and and then
of course people can check out your Instagram, which is
the Peyoti Lorex and and then the morning Star website
Morningstar conservancy dot org.
Speaker 2: Is that correct, Yeah, buddy, And I just got to
tell you I appreciate that you care about this, because
you know there's not a lot of people that I
can talk to you about the details and emote and
then be myself when we're not recording so much. You know,
like it's therapeutic for me to talk to you about
these things.
Speaker 1: No, I agree. I mean I've I've called you many
times and you've you've played therapist for me.
Speaker 2: So yeah, we're coviding.
Speaker 1: It's a reciprocal thing. I I mean, my thing with
Payote is you get people caring about Payote and then
you get them that's the way to get them caring
about the habitat and all the other plants.
Speaker 2: Hey, you know what, I started carrying about paoty and
it led directly to me caring about my freaking life. Man.
Speaker 1: You know, yeah, I think that's.
Speaker 2: Why I'm That's why I'm into this.
Speaker 1: That's a common theory.
Speaker 2: I'm healthy, I'm still alive, I got a family, and honestly,
you know me, I could tell you the details of
how it all came from my love of this plant.
I mean, I hate to get all mystical here, but
I am half.
Speaker 1: A hippie though. That's you know, plants. Plants make us
better people that they are teachers. They are teachers.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I owe something back, I guess, is what I'm saying.
So I appreciate you letting me, you know, talk about it.
Speaker 1: Yeah, man, I appreciate you coming on and hopefully I
get to see it this year. So everybody else, have
a good rest of your day. Check out Morningstar Conservancy
dot org, and you know, go fuck yourself back.