People of Darkness (1980)

The capital city of the state of Arizona, Phoenix is also known as the “Valley of the Sun.” It was originally settled as an agricultural area that modeled its early irrigation systems on the ancient Hohokam canal system that riddled the valley floor. As with most Southwestern frontier towns Phoenix went through several iterations including periods of Mexican and New Mexican territorial management. The entrance of the railroad, and later the post-World War Two automobile and baby booms, led the city’s population to soar. Phoenix became one of the largest cities in the U.S., despite being located in one of the most water-poor fringes of the Sonoran desert.

A type of igneous rock that can form intrusively, under the earth’s crust, or as part of an extrusive flow of lava. Once perlite cools it breaks into concentric pieces that look like rough, light-colored pearls, hence the name. Perlite can be used instead of sand in plaster and concrete. There are large deposits of perlite in the western United States.

The largest city in Pennsylvania, founded by William Penn in 1682 during the U.S. Colonial period. Philadelphia is popularly known as the “city of brotherly love” from the Greek translation of the name. It is located in eastern Pennsylvania between two rivers, the Delaware and the Schuylkill. The U.S. Declaration of Independence (1776) and Constitution (1787) were signed in Philadelphia.

A sacred ceremony in the tradition of the Native American Church, in which healing, spiritual cleansing, and vision quests are conducted through praying, chanting, and drumming, involving as well the ingestion of peyote, a hallucinogenic cactus that induces an altered state of consciousness believed to enhance connection with the spiritual realms. The ceremony usually lasts at least one night, and can be performed regularly (once a moth, for example), or according to need, in cases when an individual suffers from acute illness or when the community faces an urgent challenge.

A communal and spiritual leader in the Native American church. Formed in 1918 as a Pan-Indian movement and in response to government abuses and relocations, the Native American Church centers on the sacramental use of peyote, a small, spineless cactus that grows primarily in Texas and Mexico. Although using peyote for religious purposes precedes the church in various tribes, the Native American Church is the first, large organized spiritual establishment across tribes. The church still exists today, despite U.S. legal objections to the use of peyote, which is classified as a controlled substance.

Services usually take place on weekends, but there is no set schedule, and many gatherings occur in the context of healing ceremonies, blessings, or prayers for specific individual or community needs. Peyote is a psychoactive substance, and participating members often have visions, but it is the community experience of these effects that gives the ceremony spiritual power. The peyote chief is the one who conducts services and ceremonies according to the specific traditions of the tribe. This is a sacred learned skill that chosen chiefs transmit through the generations.

Peyote is a small, spineless cactus found in Mexico and Texas. When ingested, the plant has psychedelic qualities and causes hallucination, trances, and visions for its users. Peyote has been used by indigenous groups in the Americas for ceremonial purposes for thousands of years.

Peyote became the main sacrament of the Native American Church, formed in 1918 as a Pan-Indian organization. After the relocation and abuses of the US government, the church, a synthesis of traditional and Christian observances, found a captive audience. The Native American Church celebrates the use of peyote, classified as a controlled substance by the U.S. government, and its effects as a religious experience protected by the First Amendment to the U.S. Constitution.

Petroleum occurs naturally near the earth's surface in liquid, gas, and solid forms. The word petroleum in Greek literally means rock oil. Petroluem is a naturally-occurring energy sources known as a fossil fuel, meaning it derives from previously living carbon-based organic lifeforms that have been transformed, via a variety of chemical processes over time, into carbon-based inorganic substances from which humans have learned to extract stored energy.

A shallow, see-through container used to cultivate living organisms in a laboratory setting.

In the context of oil drilling, perforation means punching a hole in the cemented casing tube of the oil well in order to reach down to the reservoir. This is normally done by lowering perforating guns with explosive charges into the well. Once a hole has been punched in the casing, a pipe is inserted into it that allows for oil to flow up through the well.

A coffee maker that allows boiling water to rise up through a narrow tube and then drip down through a perforated basket filled with ground coffee. While coffee percolators were originally designed to use on a stove, today there are electrical coffee makers that operate on the same principle.