Benjamin Perez

Interpreting the Narrative of Peyote Woman:: History and Moral Agency in the Origin Narrative of the Peyote Way Benjamin Perez

This project is equally a work of structuralist folkloristics and a meditation on indigenous hermeneutics. Part I is an examination of the narrative structure of the origin story of the Peyote Way: the Narrative of Peyote Woman. The researcher unpacks the traits ("elements"), morphology ("canonical pattern"), and binary opposition ("deep structure") to get at the historicity embedded in the tale (the "ur-tale" arguably being a "memorate"). Part II is an exploration of several ethnographic interviews the researcher conducted with Crow Indian members of the Native American Church (NAC) or Peyote way, the goal of which is to get at a better understanding of the ritual role of the Water Woman and the phenomenon of a disembodied woman?s voice heard singing during the peyote ceremony. Part I is heavily "etic" (Historic-Geographic, Proppian, Levi-Straussian); Part II is heavily "emic" (augmented with insights from folklorist David J. Hufford?s "experience-centered theory"). Ultimately, the conclusions advanced in Part I are largely historical and ethical; the conclusions advanced in Part II are largely of a spiritual nature (as well as from an American Indian perspective).