One of the most sacred elements in Tohono O’odham culture is the Saguaro Cactus.  They believe these cacti are the reincarnation of humans.  Before the rise of commodity foods, and still to an extent today, the Saguaro’s provided an essential food supply and the materials for a wine ceremony.  The wine ceremony consists of consuming fermented Saguaro fruit pulp until nausea is induced.  Then people go out into the desert and vomit into the earth.  This is said to bring about rain over the summer months.  The ceremony is just another example of the Tohono O’odham’s culture of giving back to the earth. 

The gathering of Saguaro fruit and production of the wine follows a rigid process and order.  The fruit were knocked from the top of a cactus using a Saguaro rib, and fell into a bucket.  This bucket was then carried back to the gathering groups central meeting spot.  Here it is then processed into a syrup.  Two buckets of raw fruit and a bucket of water produces about a quart of syrup.  The families who produce the syrup do what they want with it, whether selling it or saving it.  But they always set some aside to contribute to the collective pot for the wine ceremony.  A few days before the ritual, the syrup set aside is collected and brought to the place where it is refined into wine.  Then every convenes at that location a few days later, having found out about it by word of mouth.  Then come a few days of singing and wine consumption until people “throw up clouds”, or the white, foamy combination of Saguaro wine and stomach acid.

Gary Nahban, "Throwing Up the Clouds: Cactus Wine, Vomit, and Rain," from The Desert Smells Like Rain