(CN) — In a 10,000-year-old tradition where it's taboo to step forward as a public figure, one has emerged. And it's a voice pushing for changes that nobody else wants.
James "Flaming Eagle" Mooney, founder of the Oklevueha Native American Church, says marijuana, ayahuasca and "sacred sexuality" are as important to his church as peyote.
"Cannabis has always been sacred, used since time immemorial," Mooney said in an interview, reached on the phone at a golf course in Utah. "Anything produced by Mother Earth is a sacrament. Outlawing a plant is a sign of a sick society."
Mooney's attempt to extend sacred status to nontraditional plants and practices has enraged the leaders of the oldest branches of the Native American Church, who say his churches represent an attempt to capitalize on federal protections designed to protect a persecuted heritage by appropriating their name.
Mooney has repeatedly been accused of having no native ancestry, despite his claim that he is a member of a Seminole tribe that is not federally recognized. He also says he is descended from the warrior chief Osceola and the anthropologist James Warren Mooney, who wrote the bylaws for the first Native American Church.
Mooney estimated that 300 churches operate under the umbrella of the Oklevhua Native American Church. Most of them use marijuana as a sacrament. Some use peyote or ayahuasca. And a handful offer "sexual healing."
Sandor Iron Rope, president of the National Council of Native American Churches and the Native American Church of North America, said in an interview that claiming anything other than peyote as a sacrament is an offensive perversion of the traditions his ancestors died to protect.
"None of the indigenous Native American Church organizations or their chapters that I represent as president of the National Council have this belief that marijuana is a sacrament," Iron Rope said. "I've traveled extensively amongst tribes and I've never sat in a Native American Church marijuana ceremony or even heard about one. I'm full-blood Lakota and I've never experienced it. I've never even heard of it."
At the Native American Church in Hawaii run by Mooney's son, Michael Rex "Raging Bear" Mooney, marijuana is the main sacrament.
Iron Rope said both Mooneys are free to practice their beliefs, just not under the umbrella of the Native American Church.
"Michael and James Mooney can pray to whatever they want to," Iron Rope said. "But trying to blend it all together is not our heritage. And it's not the Native American Church."
Steven Moore, an attorney with the Native American Rights Fund familiar with the Mooneys, said they are combining completely separate practices without respect for where they came from.
"It's like they're throwing all native religious traditions and ways into a pot and saying they are all one," Moore said. "Then you are free to just bring anything you want into the teepee, into the sweat lodge. Pray to anything you want. Use all these objects, and then you think you've got all this power. And that is prototypical, New Age spirituality. It's this big stewpot. Let's bring crystals in. Let's bring crow feathers in. There's a pretty red rock in the alleyway behind my office. Let's pray to that."