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Ayahuasca's Religious Diaspora in the Wake of the Doctrine of Discovery

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Ayahuasca's Religious Diaspora in the Wake of the Doctrine of Discovery ________________________________________________________________________________________________www.neip.info Ayahuasca’s Religious Diaspora in the Wake of the Doctrine of Discovery __________ A Dissertation Presented to the Faculty of the University of Denver and the Iliff School of Theology Joint PhD Program University of Denver __________ In Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree Doctor of Philosophy ___________ by Roger K. Green June 2020 Advisor: Carl Raschke ________________________________________________________________________________________________www.neip.info ©Copyright by Roger K. Green 2020 All Rights Reserved ________________________________________________________________________________________________www.neip.info Author: Roger K. Green Title: Ayahuasca’s Religious Diaspora in the Wake of the Doctrine of Discovery Advisor: Carl Raschke Degree Date: June 2020 Abstract ‘Ayahuasca’ is a plant mixture with a variety of recipes and localized names native to South America. Often, the woody ayahuasca vine (Banisteriopsis caapi) is combined with chacruna leaf (Psychotria viridis) in a tea, inducing psychedelic effects among its users. While social usage varies among Indigenous Peoples of South America, during the twentieth century new religious movements in Brazil began employing the mixture as religious sacrament. Additionally, various centers for ayahuasca “healing” have emerged both inside and outside of the Amazon Rainforest, frequently with the aim of helping people addicted to other substances. As interest grew, ayahuasca use in South America attracted large numbers of tourists. Use of it also began a worldwide diaspora. Due to the mixture’s ability to produce intense effects from Dimethyltryptamine (DMT), a controlled substance in many countries, legal use of the tea varies even when the importation of the plants separately is not necessarily prohibited. Negotiating with various nations, religious groups such as the União do Vegetal (UDV) and Santo Daime have successfully been granted legal use of the mixture by appealing to state recognition of bona fide religious use as sacrament. Due to prohibitionist rhetoric surrounding “War on Drugs,” the political and economic hegemony of the United States has influenced legal reception of ayahuasca globally. In the United States, arguments for legally protected use of ayahuasca emerged as appeals for religious freedom, which necessarily ii ________________________________________________________________________________________________www.neip.info interact with rationales for the exemption of peyote used as sacrament by the Native American Church (NAC). Such exemptions are imbricated within a long history of oppressive and genocidal conditions faced by Indigenous Peoples since the Doctrine of Christian Discovery. This dissertation examines the phenomenon of the ayahuasca diaspora in light of the long history of such doctrine, arguing that appeals to religious freedom and analogies to exempt status for Native use of peyote perpetuate a long history of colonialism inherently genocidal to Indigenous Peoples. While use of ayahuasca itself may not perpetuate such history, the politics of recognition in liberal democratic society employed to determine bona fide religious use evidences the continued institutionalized and legally instrumental impulses of eurochristian political theology, even in nations that present themselves as secular. Such an analysis of ayahuasca reveals deeply problematic tendencies affecting the recognition of religion in society, ongoing Indigenous struggles, drug policies, and drug treatment. This project is based on the premise that in order to address both the problems and the potentials of the growing ayahuasca diaspora, we must attend to the longer history of Indigenous genocide and its continued presence with respect to regimes of power in the wake of the Doctrine of Christian Discovery. Because my focus is on a longer historical attention to deep framing, this is not a study of the richly diverse ways ayahuasca is used by various groups. It is, rather, a contextualization based on an interdisciplinary, Critical Discourse Analysis of the emergence of ayahuasca as a global commodity and sacrament against the Doctrine of Discovery. Liberal politics of recognition and aspirations to iii ________________________________________________________________________________________________www.neip.info personal spiritual growth through ecstatic experience are often underwritten by eurochristian deep frames. In the end, I argue that pleas for the state recognition and “exemption” of ayahuasca for religious use inadvertently perpetuate colonial forms harmful to Indigenous People through the politics of recognition. iv ________________________________________________________________________________________________www.neip.info Acknowledgements During my course of studies in the Joint Doctoral Program in the Study of Religion at Iliff School of Theology and The University of Denver, my first dissertation director, Luis D. León, passed away unexpectedly. As the following work attests, I remain indebted to Luis’s thought. I am grateful to my final dissertation committee, especially the ongoing support of Carl Raschke, my current director. I am grateful to Sarah Pessin’s work on ethics and Antony Alumkal’s work in sociology of religion and especially his Sects, Cults, and New Religious Movements course at Iliff. Various other readers and interlocutors have likewise aided in my development, such as Sandra Dixon, Rob Gilmor, and Joshua Ramos. Thanks to Clark Davis, who has acted as an outside reader. During my first quarter in the joint doctoral program, I was fortunate to take a course on Christianity and American Indian Genocide with Tink Tinker. Tink’s work have been lifechanging for me. Since Tink’s retirement, he has been a constant mentor to me regarding all of my thought on Indigenous issues. Along with Tink, I am grateful to Iliff’s Native American Justice Council, especially Jill Fleischman, who has frequently read my work and thought alongside Tink and myself. Steve Newcomb’s work on the Doctrine of Discovery remains foundational, and I teach his Pagans in the Promised Land regularly at MSU Denver. I am grateful to the Four Winds American Indian Council in Denver, Glenn Morris, Robert Cross, Sky Roosevelt Morris, and the members of Colorado American Indian Movement for continuing to help me understand decolonization and the particular ongoing influence of the Doctrine of Discovery. v ________________________________________________________________________________________________www.neip.info Table of Contents Chapter One: Introduction .................................................................................................. 1 Summary ................................................................................................................. 1 Ayahuasca and the Doctrine of Christian Discovery .............................................. 2 Methodological Overview .................................................................................... 10 Political Theology ................................................................................................. 23 Not “Becoming Indian” ........................................................................................ 33 Legal Discourse .................................................................................................... 49 An Ayahuasca Ceremony in Switzerland, 2017 ................................................... 54 Conclusion ............................................................................................................ 91 Chapter Two: Rhetoric, Framing, and Critical Discourse Analysis ................................. 94 Summary ............................................................................................................... 94 Critical Discourse Analysis ................................................................................... 98 Contextualizing the Emergence of the Drug War ............................................... 108 The Drug War Game and Ayahuasca’s “Origins” .............................................. 120 A Deep Framing Approach ................................................................................. 130 The Politics of Erasure ........................................................................................ 144 Conclusion .......................................................................................................... 148 Chapter Three: The Doctrine of Discovery and the Long History of eurochristian Framing ............................................................................................................................. 150 Summary ............................................................................................................. 150 Ayahuasca, Rhetoric, and an Amazonian Context .............................................. 151 Ayahuasca use in the U.S. ................................................................................... 158 The Longer History and the Doctrine of Discovery ........................................... 172 Religion as a Concept ......................................................................................... 188 New England’s Importation of Discovery Doctrine ........................................... 196 “Culture” and Framing .......................................................................................
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