The Native American Church is considered the most widespread religious movement among the Indigenous people of North America. It holds sacred the peyote cactus, which grows naturally only in some parts of southern Texas and northern Mexico. Peyote has been used spiritually in ceremonies, and as a medicine by Native American people for millennia.
It contains several psychoactive compounds, primarily mescaline, which is a hallucinogen. Different tribes of peyote people have their own name for the cactus. While it is still a controlled substance, U.S. laws passed in 1978 and 1994 allow Native Americans to use, harvest and transport peyote. However, these laws only allow federally recognized Native American tribes to use the substance and don’t apply to the broader group of Indigenous people in the US.
The Native American Church developed into a distinct way of life around 1885 among the Kiowa and Comanche of Oklahoma. After 1891, it began to spread as far north as Canada. Now, more than 50 tribes and 400,000 people practice it. In general, the peyotist doctrine espouses belief in one supreme God who deals with humans through various spirits that then carry prayers to God. In many tribes, the peyote plant itself is a deity, personified as Peyote Spirit.
Why was the Native American Church incorporated?
The Native American Church is not one unified entity like, say, the Catholic Church. It contains a diversity of tribes, beliefs and practices. Peyote is what unifies them. After peyote was banned by U.S. government agents in 1888 and later by 15 states, Native American tribes began incorporating as individual Native American Churches in 1918. In order to preserve the peyote ceremony, the federal and state governments encouraged Native American people to organize as a church, said Darrell Red Cloud, the great-great grandson of Chief Red Cloud of the Lakota Nation and vice president of the Native American Church of North America.
In the following decades, the religion grew significantly, with several churches bringing Jesus Christ’s name and image into the church so their congregations and worship would be accepted, said Steve Moore, who is non-Native and is an attorney with the Native American Rights Fund.
“Local religious leaders in communities would see the image of Jesus, a Bible or cross on the wall of the meeting house or tipi and they would hear references to Jesus in the prayers or songs,” he said. “That probably helped persuade the authorities that the Native people were in the process of transformation to Christianity.”
This persecution of peyote people continued even after the formation of the Native American Church, said Frank Dayish Jr. a former Navajo Nation vice president and chairperson for the Council of the Peyote Way of Life Coalition.
In the 1960s, there were laws prohibiting peyote in the Navajo Nation, he said. Dayish remembers a time during that period when police confiscated peyote from his church, poured gasoline on the plants and set them on fire.
“I remember my dad and other relatives went over and saved the green peyote that didn’t burn,” he said, adding that it took decades of lobbying until an amendment to the American Indian Religious Freedom Act in 1994 permitted members of federally recognized Native American tribes to use peyote for religious purposes.
How is peyote used in the Native American Church?
Peyote is the central part of a ceremony that takes place in a tipi around a crescent-shaped earthen altar mound and a sacred fire. The ceremony typically lasts all night and includes prayer, singing, the sacramental eating of peyote, water rites and spiritual contemplation.
Morgan Tosee, a member of the Comanche Nation who leads ceremonies within the Comanche Native American Church, said peyote is utilized in the context of prayer — not smoked — as many tend to imagine.
“When we use it, we either eat it dry or grind it up,” he said. “Sometimes, we make tea out of it. But, we don’t drink it like regular tea. You pray with it and take little sips, like you would take medicine.”
Tosee echoes the belief that pervades the church: “If you take care of the peyote, it will take care of you.”
“And if you believe in it, it will heal you,” he said, adding that he has seen the medicine work, healing people with various ailments.
People treat the trip to harvest peyote as a pilgrimage, said Red Cloud. Typically, prayers and ceremonies take place before the pilgrimage to seek blessings for a good journey. Once they get to the peyote gardens, they would touch the ground and thank the Creator before harvesting the medicine. The partaking of peyote is also accompanied by prayer and ceremony. The mescaline in the peyote plant is viewed as God’s spirit, Red Cloud said.
“Once we eat it, the sacredness of the medicine is inside of us and it opens the spiritual eye,” he said. “From there, we start to see where the medicine is growing. It shows itself to us. Once we complete the harvest, we bring it back home and have another ceremony to the medicine and give thanks to the Creator.”
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