Why are some Native Americans fighting efforts to decriminalize peyote?

[douglas9]

MEXICAN WATER, Ariz. — For Navajo spiritual leader Steven Benally, saving a Native American religion from extinction means preserving those diminishing lands where hallucinogenic peyote grows wild.
“It’s a small but important step toward realizing a prophecy,” said the 61-year-old.

Preservation also means battling activists in the California Bay Area and other cities who want to legalize consumption of the psychedelic cactus.

“To these outsiders, we say, ‘Leave peyote alone. Please,’” Benally said. “Is that too much to ask?”


https://www.latimes.com/environment/story/2020-03-29/native-americans-want-mind-bending-peyote-cactus-removed-from-efforts-to-decriminalize-psychedelic-plants

[2naSalit]

1. Because this is a sacred, to them, item

which has been co-opted for recreational use as a party drug.

Aside from the fact that those who do so are endangering themselves, it is terribly disrespectful. Native Americans have suffered the co-opting of everything they hold dear by us for centuries. Most Euro-Americans just want the parts they like about Native American culture and toss the rest, disrespectfully telling Native Americans that we are still their oppressors.

This is one of the reasons why we can't have nice things.