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IPCI Summer Newsletter
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Indigenous Peyote Conservation Initiative
Summer Newsletter
August 2026
What is sovereignty: A Message from IPCI’s Board of Directors
Dear Relatives,
We come together as your Board of Directors, united by a shared purpose: to preserve the sacred traditions, strengthen our community, and ensure the medicine is available for generations to come.
We open this newsletter with the question: What is sovereignty?
"The medicine that we harvest are still alive, the roots are still there and they grow back. It is a cycle that never ends and regenerates. When it grows back and then we harvest it grows back again. I like that -- that is sovereignty where it helps itself to help others."
- Timothy Blackwater
"Sovereignty in general, when we protect it against encroachment upon our lands, sovereignty is protected by the tribe as a whole, different tribes as a whole, and one individual can't use sovereignty to advance that individual himself, because it's an umbrella of protection that goes over the tribe and its land, and its assets."
- Cedric Black Eagle
"Regarding planting seeds of sovereignty in the context of IPCI, Indigenous rights refer to the longstanding responsibility and authority of Indigenous people to care for peyote, their sacred peyote, protect sacred knowledge, maintain ceremonial practices, and make decisions about their cultural and spiritual traditions according to their own values and teachings."
- Sandor Iron Rope
"To be able to be at your calling, freely go about your life without constraint, enjoy all that the creator put forth and to relish, protect n preserve and conserve for those up and coming. Humility, based on service, learning and genuine connection to all that is SACRED, and keeping it SACRED."
- IPCI’s Cultural Director and Founding Board Member, Steven Benally
Reflections on Thanksgiving 2025
On November 26th - 30th, 2025, IPCI held its third annual Thanksgiving celebration, bringing together people who support the Peyote way of life. Nearly 350 participants gathered at IPCI’s Spiritual Homesite to celebrate gratitude for the peyote habitat and medicine. Peyote medicines were harvested and traveled home with families from 15 federally recognized Native American tribes to be utilized in ceremonies for healing around Indian Country. We imagine these medicines will go into around 200 bonafide ceremonies, supporting healing prayers that are so deeply needed.
We raised over $53,000 to support this event and other programs geared towards sovereignty and reconnection. Thank you all who donated and shared our campaign. We would not be able to do this work without you.
Mona Polacca, a citizen of the Colorado River Indian Tribes, with Havasupai, Hopi, and Tewa lineage and an Indigenous spiritual elder, educator, water protector, and advocate for Indigenous rights, shared words on the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples (UNDRIP). Particularly the rights of Indigenous Peoples to self-determination, cultural and spiritual practice, traditional knowledge, and protection of their lands and resources. She has participated in international Indigenous rights work through the United Nations and has helped bring Indigenous perspectives on spirituality, culture, water, land, and self-determination into global forums. We were so grateful to have her wisdom shared during this event.
Harvest Guide Training - Medicine Protectors
We are proud to celebrate our first Harvest Guide Training, held March 11–15th, 2026, which brought together 17 intertribal participants for a week of learning, connection, and skill-building. The training included cultural presentations, inter-generational knowledge sharing on ecological stewardship and sustainability, and hands-on preparation for supporting harvests. Participants also completed Wilderness First Aid certification, gaining essential skills to assess and respond to medical emergencies in remote environments where professional care may be delayed.
This training marks an important step in strengthening community capacity to steward land, protect sacred our medicine, and support safe and culturally grounded harvests.
Focus Section: Youth Voices
"As a young person, who is still considered a youth, I'd like to say how grateful I am for IPCI and what it stands for. I support IPCI and appreciate its continued prayers for protection for the medicine and continued respectful and sacred use of the sacrament. It means everything to me, my family in the future generations of even my children and my children's children. The devotion and sacrafice I see in the older NAC members, I look up to and appreciate. I appreciate the ways in which IPCI is protecting these instruments and the use of this peyote so that us, the next generation are able to continue to walk forward in the way it was shown to us. The preservation of our culture, our ways of knowing and being, is appreciated in more ways than one. Thank you IPCI." - Cherokee
Volunteer Spotlight: Alana H. LaMalice
This Spring we are highlighting Alana, she is of the Dene, Gwich’in, and Nēhiyawēwin (Cree), Dëne Sųłıné Yatıé
(Chipewyan), and has served as a dedicated IPCI volunteer since 2023. She just completed six weeks at IPCI's Spiritual Homesite as an Artist in Residency to complete her thesis.
"Upon returning to IPCI 605 grounds, I felt like I had landed in a safe place. This sacred spiritual homesite provides the comfortable, safe vibes of my grandparents home. I have felt an overwhelming abundance of richness that words fail to capture. I felt that familiar deep sleep-sound rest, filled with dreams. Such a welcome feeling as dreams have rarely accompanied my sleep in what feels like years."
She will be sharing about her stay on IPCI's Blog next month. Thank you Alana for all care and dedication through the years. IPCI is so grateful for you and your commitment to this medicine.
Memorandum of Understanding (MOU)
signed between ABNDN and IPCI
In Spring 2026, IPCI officially signed its first Memorandum of Understanding (MOU) with Azee’ Bee Nahaghá of Diné Nation (ABNDN), marking the beginning of shared understandings with AIRFA Peyote organizational chapters. This agreement establishes a framework for collaboration and mutual goals moving forward around the conservation of the Medicine. A memorandum of understanding is commonly used by organizations to outline shared intentions, roles, and expectations in a collaboration.
Letter from the Executive Director, Miriam Volat
When considering the priorities that should guide a week or month of work as an IPCI staff member, my thoughts often return to the early National Council of Native American Churches meetings held at the Executive Inn in Laredo in 2016.In the beginning of our Initiative, there was this incredible intention of ensuring that not only the medicine was healthy, clean, and abundant - but that the relationship of all Indigenous Peyote people was direct, that reconnection was led by prayer and restoring responsibility in each and everyone involved.
Now, almost a decade later, we are still learning. Our spiritual and ecological harvests, our conservation leases, the normal rhythm of our years have settled a bit and are taking roots in the Tamulipan thornscrub Peyote habitat. We are being neighbors, tending many acres of land, refining our policies and procedures, and growing our ability to regenerate the peyote gardens as well as growing our Board of Directors and growing our staff. Maybe we are getting ready to move from toddler-hood to an 8-ribbed organization? The long term prayers of this Initiative require unity, partnership, money, creativity, and daily learning of how to support better and better and keep going even though it’s pretty darn thorny in the Medicine habitat.
Those first meetings explored the basic strategies for Medicine sovereignty, and we’re still following that basic road-map.
Miriam Volat, IPCI Executive Director
Upcoming Events
We are excited to announce the following programs and events:
Assessment Training - Fall 2026 - Stay Tuned for Dates!
Tentative Open Harvesting - October 23rd - 25th, 2026
Thanksgiving Celebration - November 25th - 29th, 2026
Indigenous Peyote Conservation Initiative
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