Peyote Hunt

In Peyote Hunt, Barbara Myerhoff fails to make a significant contribution to the study of Native American religions due to four key misunderstandings. Peyote Hunt gives the account of Myerhoff’s relationship with Ramon, mara’akame of the Huichol tribe of Mexico, and an integral tribal event known as the Peyote Hunt. In this text, Myerhoff identifies that her main goal is “to help fulfill Ramon’s most cherished wish … of presenting and preserving … his customs, his symbols, [and] his stories” in a humanistic way (21). Myerhoff’s introduction to the Huichol religion is a non-humanistic one in that it fails to emphasize its cosmology in order to provide insight into the Huichol world view. By applying an analyst’s model to describe aspects of the Huichol religion, she uses ethnocentric terminology that does not accurately express Huichol ideology. She applies meaning and purpose to Huichol symbols and overlooks their functional applications in Huichol rituals. Finally, M...