Native American Church

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Native American Church

The Native American Church of North America (NAC) is a religious organization whose aim is to strengthen and protect the practice of peyote religion among Native Americans. Members seek health, guidance, wisdom, and good relations through a sacramental practice centered on peyote, a small, spineless cactus native to north-central Mexico and southernmost Texas. They pray to Grandfather Peyote, whom they also call "our Medicine" and "our sacrament," but many also pray to Jesus and consider their religion a form of Christianity. Many believe that peyote contains God's revelation in plant form, just as Jesus contained it in human form.

A peyote meeting can be called by individuals or families out of gratitude or need. Traditionally a tepee is erected for the meeting, at a secluded, pleasant site. As important as the meeting itself is the care with which the preparations are made, including the fashioning of fan, staff, water drum, and other implements used. Peyote meetings are led by a roadman, who is recognized for his knowledge and maturity but is not paid. Persons in several other roles assist. The meeting lasts from evening until morning. Essentially it consists of traditional songs accompanied with a water drum, alternating with individual prayers. Peyote music has a distinctive rhythm and style, with a fast drumbeat and a falling melody line. As the songs and prayers continue through the night, several times peyote buttons or peyote tea is passed around and consumed.

At dawn a woman known as Water Woman, who represents Peyote Woman, who originally brought peyote to the people, brings in a pail of water. Songs and prayers over this water mark the conclusion of the ceremony, after which the participants adjourn for a morning feast. This is a bare outline of the basic ceremony, several variations of which exist. They fall into three main classifications, known as the Big Moon, Half Moon, and Cross Fire versions. The extent to which and the manner in which Christian elements are incorporated in the ceremony are one distinguishing characteristic.

Controversy has plagued peyote religion because of the plant's mild psychoactive qualities. Peyote is sometimes sought as a hallucinogenic recreational drug, although obtaining and using it as such are illegal in the United States. Native American Church members describe their experience in far different terms. The primary benefits they report include general health and vitality; sobriety; healing of specific ailments; mental, emotional, and psychological clarity; and an abiding sense of kinship with fellow participants. Visions and hallucinations, if they occur at all, are said to be mere by-products of the healing process, often indicating areas of life where an individual needs to make changes.

Nonetheless, peyote religion, from its beginning, has had to fight for legal protection in the United States. From the 1880s through the late 1930s, and as late as 1963, members were forced to lobby Congress to halt proposed federal laws punishing the possession of peyote even for religious purposes. Quanah Parker (1850s–1911), a Comanche, was a vigorous and influential early advocate, as was Albert Hensley, a Ho-Chunk, a generation later. Their cause was supported by a long line of anthropologists, beginning with James Mooney (1861–1921). Despite success on the federal level, numerous state laws continued to prohibit the gathering, possession, transportation, and consumption of peyote for religious purposes.

In 1990 the U.S. Supreme Court was asked to decide on the constitutionality of these laws, in Smith v. Employment Division of Oregon (494 U.S. 872). It was argued that the laws threatened freedom of religion, and that there was no scientific evidence that peyote use by NAC members is harmful or addictive; but the Court affirmed the state prohibitions, ruling that freedom of religion in this case was a "luxury" society could not afford. This decision was widely protested by religious leaders of many faiths and by scholars. Definitive federal legislation was passed to grant full protection in 1994, as amendments to the Religious Freedom Restoration Act of 1993.

Today the peyote religion of the Native American Church is vigorous, despite opposition within some Native American communities, either from traditionalists representing older practices or from Christian congregations. Membership in 1990 was estimated at 250,000. Members often participate in other religious practices as well, but many younger members were raised without regular access to older local traditions. For many Native American people living in urban environments, or leading highly mobile lifestyles, and for many who do not speak the traditional languages of older ceremonial traditions, the Native American Church has been an invaluable source of sobriety, healing, community, and guidance.