INDIANS FIGHT PEYOTE, HALLUCINOGENIC TEA COMPARISON

Three branches of the Native American Church object to a Santa
Fe-based group comparing its use of a hallucinogenic tea with the
church's use of peyote.

In an amicus curiae or friend-of-the-court brief filed earlier this
month, the Native American Church of Oklahoma, the Native American
Church of North America and the Native American Church of the Kiowa
Tribe opposed the group's assertion that it should be treated the
same as the church in being allowed to use a controlled substance.

O Centro Espirita Beneficiente Unaio Do Vegetal, or UDV, wants to
stop the U.S. Drug Enforcement Agency from confiscating a tea called
hoasca.

Hoasca, made from two Amazonian plants, contains N.N.
dimethyltryptamine or DMT, a controlled substance.

UDV President Jeffrey Bronfman sued the federal government after the
DEA and other law-enforcement agencies seized 30 gallons of tea from
his office in Santa Fe in 1999. No charges were filed.

Last fall, U.S. District Judge James Parker heard a week and a half
of testimony on UDV's motion for a preliminary injunction. Parker has
yet to issue a ruling.

UDV says it has the same right to use the tea as the Native American
Church does to use the psychedelic cactus peyote.

The churches' friend-of-the-court brief was written by C. Bryant
Rogers and David Gomez of the Roth, VanAmberg, Rogers, Ortiz,
Fairbanks & Yepa firm of Santa Fe. Gomez, a native of Taos Pueblo, is
the acting chairman of the New Mexico Democratic Party.

"It is not a fair comparison," Rogers said in an interview Thursday.
"They have to establish their rights on their own merits."

UDV attorney John Boyd said Friday that the three chapters do not
represent all Native American Church members.

"It's really regrettable that these particular Native American Church
organizations feel that the only way to protect their exemption is to
make sure that no other religion gets a similar exemption," Boyd said.

Rogers and Gomez wrote that their clients take no position on the
merits of UDV's claims based on the Religious Freedom Restoration
Act. But they argued that comparing UDV's rights with those of the
church is "badly distorting and misrepresenting to this Court the
nature, legal history and status of the Native American Church."

"This is but the most recent in a long line of efforts by various
individuals or religious groups to make such an Equal Protection
challenge."

Last year, UDV rejected a proposal for a friendly brief from the
Santo Daime Church of the Holy Light of the Queen in Ashland, Ore.,
which uses a DMT-based tea called ayahuasca. UDV supported Santo
Daime's legal analysis but opposed its participation in the
development of an evidentiary record.

Rogers and Gomez wrote that UDV incorrectly argues that the Native
American Church is multiethnic, Christian and not restricted to
American Indians. Other courts have held that the church is limited
to American Indian members of federally recognized tribes, they wrote.

Rogers said non-Indians occasionally participate in Native American
Church rites, but courts have not exempted them from laws prohibiting
peyote, although the Utah Supreme Court late last week agreed to hear
arguments on whether non-Indians may use peyote in religious
ceremonies. He said the U.S. Justice Department is seeking to amend
its regulations to include only members of Indian tribes in its
exemptions.

Boyd and Nancy Hollander of the Freedman, Boyd, Daniels, Hollander,
Goldberg & Cline firm in Albuquerque plan to file a response to the
brief's arguments by Monday.

But Boyd said Friday that the three Native American Church chapters
are ignoring reality in denying the history of non-Indian
participation in peyote rites and raising a false concern that the
church's exemption for peyote might be abridged if UDV wins its case.

"I think because of the difficult history that native people have had
with our government over the past two centuries, their view is,
somehow, some way, 'We're going to get screwed in this,' " Boyd said.
"You can't blame them."

Rogers and Gomez's brief says denying UDV the right to use hoasca
will not deprive its members of their Constitutional rights.

"We're basically saying the flaw in your argument is you're not
similarly situated," Rogers said. "The bottom line is that there's a
different history and political-legal status for the Native American
Church as compared to any other non-Indian religion."

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Santa Fe New Mexican

Reader Opinions:

Name: elsbieta

Date: Jan, 21 2002 The Native American Church representatives, Gomez
and C.Bryant Rogers, should study the ancient Native American history
of sacred ayahuasca use by their Southern kin before condemning
seekers to purgatory. They will benefit by not perpetrating
attrocities and by studying before they react. Besides, there is no
such thing as Indian and non-Indian, only people in pain, suffering
from different degrees of alienation from the Mystery and the
non-human world. Peyote and Ayahuasca, used carefully and with
respect, help us to remember the mystery and to live in harmony with
each other.

Name: Chononita

Date: Jan, 19 2002 I find the three Native American Church's legal
brief preposterous and extremely weak: The UDV is a
religion/practice, which uses a tea of sacred plants (B.caapi and P.
viridis) as "medicine" (read sacrament) derived from long standing
(thousands of years) and very cohesive Native American heritage just
like the like the Native American. Likewise, the Native American
Church is a religion/practice derived from long standing Native
American traditions. A little historical perspective is in order
here: The Native Americans dwelling in the U.S.A. were introduced to
Peyote only about 150 years ago by Kwana Parker, who brought this
revolutionary religion back from Mexico. It turned out to be such a
unifying, healing, positive spiritual vector that it was adopted by
many who were on reservations. Now, UDV was likewise introduced to
the Brazilian population by one man, who learned the practice from
Native Americans tribal people. I the last decade or so it spread to
The U.S.A. and Europe, where it was eagerly adopted by many many
people who find it oppressive to live in a spiritual vacuum. Another
parallel is that both "Ayahuasca" and "Peyote" are psychoactive in
that they provide direct experience of the spirit world. Which of
course is a hard concept to grasp for most of the people who have no
experience whatsoever of that reality and who are so steeped in our
modern materialist culture that they intellectually reject spiritual
growth and development and embrace materialism.