Native American Church, is a loosely confederated religious organization with some 250,000 American Indian adherents in the United States, Canada, and Mexico.Its distinctive characteristic is the sacramental use of peyote (
Lophophora williamsii), a cactus found in the Chihuahuan Desert that contains the psychedelic mescaline. An important part of the twentieth‐century Pan‐Indian movement, the Native American Church has been further influential by expanding the scope of religious practice protected under the First Amendment.
Suppression of peyote use began during the Spanish colonial period; starting in the 1880s, U.S. government Indian agents issued new prohibitions. At that time, the peyote ceremony was spreading into Oklahoma from the Rio Grande region as two Lipan Apaches, Billy Chiwat and Pinero, introduced it to Quanah Parker (Comanche), who along with John Wilson (Caddo) became the ceremony's principal systematizers. The ceremony proved popular among tribes throughout the Great Plains and
Southwest in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries as a way to revitalize Native American culture, which was under stress from dispossession, forced acculturation, alcoholism, and family breakdown. The Native American Church's formal history commenced in 1918, when practitioners of the ancient peyote ceremony, seeking legal protection, incorporated the church in Oklahoma.
In light of its crisis origins, the Native American Church's tenets emphasize social unity, hard work, sobriety, and monogamy. The ritual use of peyote is believed to advance these goals through the plant's powers to heal and to elevate consciousness. The two main ritual forms, the Half Moon Way and the Big Moon or Cross Fire Way, both of which last all night and take their names from the shape of the altar used, were developed by Parker and Wilson, respectively. A recurring issue for the Native American Church has been the extent of syncretism between Christianity and traditional Native American religion.
After a series of conflicts in which peyote use fell afoul of antidrug laws, the Native American Church committed itself to expanding the First Amendment's guarantees of religious freedom. Led by Reuben Snake, the church built a coalition that lobbied Congress in the early 1990s. In response, Congress enacted the American Indian Religious Freedom Act Amendments of 1994 guaranteeing that the religious use of peyote by Native Americans would not be prohibited or subject to discrimination by either federal or state authorities.
See also
Church and State, Separation of;
Drugs, Illicit;
Indian History and Culture;
Religion.
Bibliography
Omer C. Stewart , Peyote Religion: A History, 1987.
Huston Smith and Reuben Snake, comps. and eds., One Nation under God: The Triumph of the Native American Church, 1996.
Jonathan D. Sassi
