NATIVE AMERICAN CHURCH BACKGROUND INFORMATION CONCERNING THE HISTORY, LEGAL STATUS AND By: JAY COURTNEY FIKES, Ph.D. members. NATIVE AMERICAN CHURCH Prepared by Jay Courtney Fikes, Ph.D. "The only thing necessary for the triumph of evil SUMMARY The Native American Church is the largest indigenous religion in this country. Estimates range to a quarter of a million Indigenous people have treated the peyote cactus as a sacrament for at least 10,000 years in Mexico, and at least 7,000 years in the United States. The Native American Church (NAC) is the modern embodiment of this ancient religious way of life. The NAC is in a crisis situation. Its legal existence is jeopardized. The U.S. Supreme Court in 1990 ruled in Employment Division of Oregon v. Smith (493 U.S. 378) that the First Amendment does not protect the ritual life of this church (i.e., the sacramental use of peyote). There is no record of danger or harm associated with the religious practices of the NAC. The Federal Drug Enforcement Administration and the NAC work cooperatively in protecting the distribution and use of peyote. Yet, since the Smith decision, NAC members have been unnecessarily hindered in the exercise of their religion by the removal of the constitutional underpinning that had protected them. Indeed, at least one NAC member is currently being prosecuted for a felony for practicing what earlier courts had held was a constitutionally protected religion. For these reasons a coalition of NAC leaders, advocates and supporters from around the country are asking Congress to put back what the Supreme Court took away by amending the American Indian Religious Freedom Act of 1978 to create a specific federal statutory exemption for the bona fide religious use of peyote by Indian people in the traditional exercise of their religion. FOR MORE INFORMATION CONTACT: Reuben A. Snake, Jr., Coordinator Jay C. Fikes, Ph.D. Smithsonian Institution Post-doctoral Fellow James Botsford, Director P.O. Box 6100 715 842-1681 Walter Echo-Hawk, Senior Attorney Boulder, CO 80302 303 447-8760 68-366-93 - 2 OUR INALIENABLE RIGHT TO WORSHIP THE CREATOR Their More than appreciation for diversity of religious expression led the authors of our First Amendment to insist that "Congress shall make no law prohibiting free exercise of religion." commitment to religious freedom was based on their conviction that each of us is a child of God. Ever since we declared our independence from Great Britain, the United States has been sustained by faith in a few "self-evident truths." Is the right to freely worship the Creator who endowed each of us with certain "inalienable rights" still self-evident? If it is, no member of Congress should be reluctant to enact legislation to protect the religious liberty of over 250,000 members of the NAC. Legal protection for sacramental peyote use of NAC members seemed assured in 1960, when the Arizona Supreme Court decided that a statute prohibiting possession of peyote was unconstitutional when applied to Mary Attakai, a Navajo peyotist. The Arizona Supreme Court ruled that: There are no harmful after-effects from the use of In 1964, the California Supreme Court ruled, in People vs. Woody, that Navajo railroad workers using peyote in "honest religious rites" were protected by the First Amendment of the United States Constitution (Anderson 1980: 168). |