The Native American Church

The Native American Church is not something new; it is the flowering of something ancient. It is the fire we were told to carry, the songs we were told to remember. We honor peyote and other sacred plants, not as drugs or curiosities, but as sacraments, given by the Great Spirit to open the mind’s eye and cleanse the heart. We pray with them through the night, or in retreat, until the soul remembers who it is.

Our church holds no walls. Mother Earth is our floor; Father Sky is our roof. The altar may be built in a tipi, or beneath stars, but it is always set in reverence. We gather not for power or politics, but to be healed, to remember, and to walk rightly.

We believe in one Creator. But we do not deny the rivers that flow from the mountain: Christian, Buddhist, Muslim, Jewish, and tribal alike. All these rivers teach us the same sacred truths: Charity. Faith. Forgiveness. Gratitude. Honor. Humility. Respect.

The name of the Church became formal in the days of Quanah Parker, the Comanche war chief who became a medicine man. A Huichol marakame taught him the way of peyote. He carried it north, and the fire followed him. In 1918, the federal name was written down by James Mooney, an ethnographer, yes, but also a man who listened. That line was kept. But the line did not begin there. It began when the plants first spoke to the people.

Peyote is only one of the medicines we carry, but it is the heart of our prayer. It is womb-shaped and matriarchal, rooted deep in the soil. It awakens, humbles, and heals. It was sought on ancient trade routes from Peru to Alaska. It was feared by colonizers, not because it harmed, but because it awakened. It reminded our people who they were.

Today, the fire burns in many lands—throughout the United States, Canada, Mexico, Central and South America, and the islands of the Caribbean. Wherever our people walk with the medicine in truth, the Church lives.

We are not bound by paper or power. We are bound by prayer, vision, and the covenant to carry the fire. The Grandmothers now keep that fire. And we walk with them, because the time has come again.