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Holmes: You have written books such as Native Wisdom, and an absolutely wonderful book, Perceptions of the Natural Way. You are Ed McGaa, Eagle Man. I honor you as an elder and a teacher. Are you considered a Medicine Man?

Eagle Man: I'm not a Medicine Man, I'm an author. But I've been around spirituality considerably more than many, many people that claim to be Medicine Men.

Eagle Man: Right. Born on the Reservation. So, at one time Indian religion was not popular at all, even Sioux religion. The missionaries were so effective to stamp it out that the majority of Indians actually turned against the old religion. They won't admit that, but that's exactly what happened. Just look at the tribes. They became Christians. They gave up the old ways and even ridiculed them. But I don't fault them because they were put through government indoctrination programs when the missionary and government agent worked hand in hand.

Holmes: What did they actually do to the Indians to bring them to this?

Eagle Man: They put them in boarding schools and they kept them away from their parents for 4-1/2 to 9 months a year. Sometimes they'd get to come home for Christmas vacation. They were separated. Most all your western tribes from Minnesota on to the west have gone through this experience. My tribe has only been in 100 years. It's only come into so called modern living. They were captives on the reservation. They had to have passes. The Cavalry was, and of course, they were overly watchful of the Sioux because we had defeated the Army and won the Treaty of 1868. So they did everything possible to stamp out our religion. They put us into boarding schools and all of my brothers and sisters have gone to those boarding schools.

Eagle Man: They were at Pine Ridge. They were on every reservation. You name it, they got it

Holmes: And these were basically slanted to take away the Indians' belief system in nature and to put in the Christian belief system?

Eagle Man: The Indians' nature belief system was totally forbidden. The language was forbidden. People don't want to believe this. But it's all true what happened. So very effectively did they stamp out any religion. They also stamped out pride in culture. There were some old stalwarts that would not give up their way. Our reservation was so big, 100 miles practically by 100 miles. The Rosebud Reservation was about the same size. Standing Rock and Cheyenne Eagle Butte. These were all Sioux reservations. Big. In those reservations you had real stalwart families that were fullbloods that would not give up. They were punished severely. And their kids were punished severely in the boarding schools. They were put on half rations. Some even starved to death or committed suicide because they were so rejected. Missionaries were given land grants on U.S. Indian land. It was given to them to do all this tax free to build these structures and force their propaganda. So consequently, when I was a young boy, I was lucky. They made a bombing range out of our parents' ranch and we had to go off the reservation and I got to go to public school.

Holmes: They made a bombing range on your land, on the reservation?

Eagle Man: It was other lands, the northern part of the reservation. All the ranches north of Rocky Ford, a huge area, were made into more of a machine gun range. You couldn't live out there because the machine guns were shooting all over.

Holmes: This was after you had already been given that land by Treaty?

Eagle Man: Oh yes. Yes, by the Government during World War II. But the Indians never protested. We did not know how to protest. We all joined the military, our young boys. We are a very patriotic people, super patriotic. They all joined the service and they were off fighting the Germans end yaps, and my father was working on the Air Force runways that airplanes would come down and shoot up all their land. We never even questioned. We never questioned our government. We were a different kind of people. Whether you agreed with it or not, this is what we did. I can only tell you what we did. You have to make your own judgments.

So I got to go to school in public school. In my graduating class there were five maybe six Indian kids. I was the only one that danced Indian. I started dancing Indian when I was little, pow- wow dancing. From that, that led me to the Sun Dance that led me to my religion. Kids in my own class would not even talk to me because I showed I liked dancing Indian.

Holmes: What was wrong with dancing Indian?

Eagle Man: At that time everything was looked down on. You had Indians who pretended to be White. In those days Black people straightened out their hair and people wanted to be White. That's just where it was at. You have to keep out judgment. We were so oppressed and we were taught that the White man's was the only way.

We were happy in a sense because we had our own people. We liked our dancing. The old Indians would come up from the Reservation and stay at my folks' place and my dad had worked hard and had a decent home. We were happy. I had a good mom and dad, and we were happy in ourown little bliss. I played basketball and played sports, and I got on the team, and did normal things. But I always danced Indian. And I loved it.

Holmes: What is the symbology of dancing Indian? What does that mean to an Indian to dance?

Eagle Man: It was pow-wow dancing. In those days we danced in a circle, an arena, and actually White people would come and take our pictures and all that stuff. It did not bother us one way or the other. It's like being a ballet dancer. You like to do what you like to do. Beautiful costumery. So my mother was President of the Winona Indian Women's Club in Rapid City. We did our own thing and were happy with our ethnic background. Then the Sun Dance started in the '50s. Old Bill Eagle Feather, a holy man, Chief Bill Eagle Feather, he and Fool's Crow brought the Sun Dance out in the open. He said we're going to bring it out in the open. Before we had to hide and go back in the Badlands and do it secretly.

Eagle Man: They did it secretly and so Bill said this is not right. We should be honest about this and come out in the open. Well, the missionaries and the government had let up. The cavalary was gone and we had all been in World War II and I had been in Korea. So the government did not put so many clamps on us, so many restrictions The e missionaries were the only ones that really got uptight because we were going to bring our Sun Dance back. But they were so successful that they also had relaxed as you do when you're flushed with success.

Holmes: You're talking about the religious people.

Eagle Man: Yeah. There were so many Catholic Indians running around there, they didn't think a few Indians doing Sun Dance was going to hurt anything. So we were allowed to do our Sun Dance and Bill Eagle Feather brought it back. So these two holy men were the main ones. There were several others, John Fire and Peter Ketchum, but I was mainly close to the others. There was another person in there named Ben Black Elk who had interpreted every word of the book Black Elk Speaks to John Nihard. The great book Black Elk Speaks.

Holmes: That was originally done in native tongue?

Eagle Man: It had to be because the old man did not know how to talk English. So he gave it in the native tongue to Ben. Then Ben transferred it to Nihard. So Ben knew all of Black Elk's vision. He was a good friend of mine. He was older. In fact he named his boy Wambli Hokeshilah, and then later on they changed it to Wambli Wichasha, "Eagle Man." We translated it to Eagle Man.

Holmes: And that is your sacred native name.

Eagle Man: I was just a little kid. He named me Eagle Boy. There's nothing sacred about it, it's just a name. Then later on when I was in the Sun Dance he was there and he had me carry his father's pipe in the Sun Dance, there were six Sun Dances, six years in a row. He said, you're going to carry my father's pipe. And I wish I did. Now we're going to give you a new name. Your name's going to be Wambli Wichasha. They didn't make a big ceremony out of it. They were inside the Lodge.

They told me the priest was coming there. He was trying to stop our Sun Dance. He had a portable altar in the back of his pickup. The year before he had stopped it. He made us—we only danced Thursday, Friday and Saturday. We pierced on Saturday. The fourth day we couldn't do Sun Dance. We always have things in four lots of times. He brought his portable altar there. The Indians unloaded it. He said mass at the base of the Sun Dance tree.

The next year I stood up against him. The other Indians were afraid so they all appeared on Saturday, but I was the only guy who appeared on Sunday. We had a confrontation and I won the confrontation.

The next year after that I brought AIM [American Indian Movement] and they stood by while we had our Sun Dance. The year after that the AIM members actually danced in the Sun Dance. From then on it was protected.

Holmes: Would you explain a bit about what the law was about Sun Dancing and why you went back to it?

Eagle Man: It was an illegal law. Charles Burke was Commissioner in the 1920s and he wrote an administrative law, which was an illegal law that, just like it was an illegal law that Blacks drink out of different drinking fountains and they had to have different rooms for a bus station. That was illegal yet it was put into effect across the South. This illegal law was put into effect clear across the reservation. We were forbidden to dance any ceremonial religious-type dances. This Sun Dance was our annual coming together to thank the Great Spirit. The missionaries coerced Burke into writing these administrative laws that forbade us to do this. Of course, there were other Commissioners in the Bureau of Indian Affairs and the Department of Interior that put out these illegal administrative laws. But the Jim Crow days allowed them to happen. But we rebelled, as soon as we rebelled—and I was one of the few young guys there, all these young guys running around trying to be so Indian. That's good, but back in my day we didn't have very many young guys to support us. In fact, there were only—I can name them. There was Buddy Red Bow and Sonny Larive, who were the first two young guys that supported the Sun Dance, and I was the third. We were pretty much alone.

Holmes: Why was it important to go back to doing Sun Dance?

Eagle Man: Because it was one of our major ceremonies. We have seven major ceremonies and it was the main one. All ceremony is simply an expression to your concept of your higher power. It is a ceremony where we express our thanksgiving. We are thankful that we live, so we express it for four days as a tribe. It's a tribal expression, whereas a lone vision quest up on a mountain as a lone person is not so much expressing his appreciation of life, that's always part of it, but he or she is more into where am I going to go with my life, my future. So there are different concepts within a ceremony that you get out of. But the tribal Sun Dance is the annual coming together of the tribe, and it also fortifies the tribe. It brings them into closer contact to their concept of their higher power. Ours happens to be Wakantanka. We don't try to describe Wakantanka, we try to say Wakantanka is simply a mystery. We don't want to say what it is because we don't know. We want to be honest.

Holmes: And that's what you refer to in your book Native Wisdom as the "Great Mystery?"

Eagle Man: Wakantanka means "Great Mystery." "Great Holy." We do not even put a gender on it. Some of these Indians put a gender on it, but I think that's the influence from Christianity. The farther East you go the more influence from Christianity you'll see amongst these tribes. Some tribes even have devils and evil spirits and I think that comes from the Christians. The Sioux, our Great Spirit is so big and so vast and so powerful, it has no need to make such a thing. It has no need to make a devil. It has no need to make an evil spirit. To us evil is ignorance, not knowing. The Great Spirit is all-knowing.

We brought back our religion, our spirituality mainly through the Sun Dance; of course, we had the conflict with the missionary and I was the main young guy who would conflict with them. I was also in law school, so I would use some of the White man's legal principles right back on the White people that were trying to stop us. So that put me pretty strong into Indian religion and the holy men communicated quite strongly with me and I would take them around, mainly Bill Eagle Feather. I would drive them around and we'd go do ceremonies. He would do them and I would assist him. So I've been in close contact with some really powerful holy men that the young guys in my day totally ignored.

Holmes: Sweat Lodges, for the sake of those who do not know, what are the purposes of them?

Eagle Man: Sweat Lodges are usually a ceremony of a group that seeks to express their appreciation, their beseechment to their higher power, their respect to their higher power. So we build a lodge and we cover the lodge, we build a fire and we put red hot rocks into the lodge and we sit and we put water on the rocks. That's the mechanics of it. We sing and we say prayers. Most everybody does the Sweat Lodge a bit different. Mine, I do it in four parts. A lot of people do it in four parts. I beseech the four directions.

Holmes: Why would you beseech the four directions and what do those mean to you?

Eagle Man: The Great Spirit is unknown. It is a maker, a creator. We could see that Creator has made four directions. It's obvious. The north and south are totally different. East and west are totally different directions. Look what happens, everything. The cleansing white snow and cold teach you endurance, strength, truthfulness, honesty. That's the north. Then you go to the east power. The sun comes up every day, providing you look for it We think Creator allows you to see things and learn things every day because the sun comes across to bring us knowledge. When the sun goes down it's a rest. You should rest. But we do a ceremony at the night time because there's less distraction for the spirits. We do actually believe in spirits too, but we'll get into that later on. The south power is warming right now and it brings growth and we eat and live. The west powers, the life-giving rains come out of the west. Without those life-giving rains we wouldn't be alive. Eighty percent of our body is life-giving rain. There are two other powers, too. Mother Earth and then there's Father Sky. We are not afraid of our Creator because Creator made us.

Holmes: And the function of those two? Would you describe them a little for us?

Eagle Man: Mother Earth is very simple. We actually think of her as alive. We are upon her. We are made from her. Twenty percent of our bodies is actually made from the earth. The other 80 percent is fluid, so we can move. You can't move unless you're fluid. Mother Earth is a mother, she's our home, we have to take care of her. She takes care of us. She is a power. She's a living entity. The Great Spirit made her that way.

Of course, Father Sky, Chante, the heart of Father Sky is the sun. A mysterious force comes from that sun that is unexplainable. Without that sun you would have no life. That sun is in daily communion with Mother Earth. We are actually sun power, we are earth power, and we are the lifegiving rain power actually as physically made up. Then in our minds we have the characteristics of the other three directions. As I said, honesty, truthfulness, endurance, strength, cleanliness from the north. Knowledge, wisdom, understanding [from the east] because when that sun comes up you can get that if you look for it. If you don't look for it you'll be ignorant. We actually put this into your disk of life. Whatever we say it makes sense because you do put that in your disk of life and when you die that's the only thing you would have with you and that goes on. Of course, from the south, growth and medicine.

It is so very simple. Our religion is very simple but you could see it and that is why the missionaries are so totally afraid of it. Because if people get to know our way they'll see what the missionaries are talking about doesn't make sense.

Holmes: You have no need to try to control anyone with your religion.

Eagle Man: You never should control, never. You try to control someone, somebody tries to control me, I'll chastise forever when I get into the spirit world.

If anyone does bad to you, don't worry about it. They're going to come into the spirit world and you're going to be—there's no size, you don't work for them, there's no power, there's no money, there's no good old boy system, and it's straight-out truth. Whatever they do bad to you, you can chastise them forever. When somebody does good for you, you can honor them forever, too. Everything you see here in life is a reflection of the spirit world that lies beyond.

Holmes: What about the Medicine Wheel? How does that figure in this?

Eagle Man: That's the four directions, or the six powers of the universe. The Medicine Wheel is just a symbol that you use. When we do a ceremony we mention these directions. It places us closer to the great spirit. That is just a symbol for expression.

Holmes: How do the drums, pipes and trees and that sort of thing figure in your belief structure and your inherited beliefs?

Eagle Man: A drum is just a sound maker. In ceremony at times, at Vision Quest I have no need for a drum. At Sweat Lodge I like to have a drum inside the Sweat Lodge because it just kind of heightens the expression.

The peacepipe. Many tribes use the peacepipe. They use that to express to the four directions, or the six powers.

Holmes: Do you know the background of the peacepipe, where it started and how?

Eagle Man: Nobody really knows for sure because the Sioux had pipes before they came westward. We think we evolved, I've traced our tribe back to North Carolina and I've talked with the tribal chairwoman of the Wakoma tribe.

As soon as we were in that area we migrated out of there because we avoided the White people, the Europeans coming. It was the best thing we ever did because it allowed us to live free for a good 200- 250 years.

Holmes: And you didn't get the treatment of the Trail of Tears that the Cherokee did?

Eagle Man: Yeah. If we'd stayed there, they'd have Trail of Tear-ed us and we'd have died out and we'd all be down in Oklahoma and they would have made Christians out of all of us.

Holmes: Right now Floyd Hand is very concerned about the buffalo situation. Would you explain to us what buffalo mean to your particular culture?

Eagle Man: Buffalo were simply, when we came on the plains, the main provider. It was everything to us, it kept us alive probably a good 200 years or so. It kept us free from the European hordes coming. So it is an all-provider, that's how I look at it. Now it's a symbol and these white buffalo, I have to quote Floyd. Floyd says that this is a sign that the Great Spirit wants us to share our knowledge with the White man. There was a Mr. Brown Bear, I forget his first name, but he was a holy man also. They went to see these buffalo calves that were white. They made these statements. Unfortunately the Associated Press picked it up and said what they said. I'm glad Floyd went there and said that because he said it's time to share our knowledge.

Holmes: That takes a lot of courage, I understand for some of you, because of your belief systems and the elders of your tribe.

Eagle Man: Most of my elders are dead. There are a lot of Catholic elders out there. There are a lot of Catholic Christian elders out there that don't want you to share it. If you go out and share Christianity, then it's fine, but they don't want you to talking about any religion because it's too powerful. Then you've got these young guys who are just shooting their mouths off and they're saying that so they get some attention. If they had read Black Elk Speaks they would have seen that Black Elk shared his knowledge in 1930 and they would have had tremendous respect for Black Elk. If they really would study that vision they wouldn't be shooting their mouths off.

Holmes: Tell us a little about who Black Elk is.

Eagle Man: Black Elk was a great prophet and he had a powerful vision before the Battle of Little Big Horn, several years before of that. It had nothing to do with the Battle of Little Big Horn, it just happened to be in the same area. It was about the six powers of the universe. Joseph Campbell said this is the best example of spiritual imagery that he ever knew. Spiritual imagery. He went into the spirit world and there the six powers appeared to him and spoke to him and this is from a young boy who could not have made it up. These six powers directly under the Great Spirit spoke to Black Elk and conveyed to them this knowledge of themselves. Then they told about the Blue Man. They predicted the Blue Man and showed him the Blue Man of corruption, destruction, greed, lies, jealousy and deceit, actually saw it. Six powers went down to kill the Blue Man after they had conveyed their knowledge to Black Elk. Each one spoke to Black Elk individually and told him about themselves, so therefore Black Elk had this knowledge.

Eagle Man: Blue man was what we have got now. We see the politicians in Washington, your corporation presidents, everyone who's killing the earth. You see Blue Man amongst Indians. You've got tribal council members, council chairmen, we've got two of them up in prison, they belong in prison because they took the money away from the people. I see the Blue Man. Some of these young guys say "don't share, don't share." They're doing that just for attention for themselves. They really haven't—they're saying bad things about Black Elk. They are Blue Men also because they're telling lies. It's keeping the people down. There's inequality. You know the whole mess that this world is in now is the Blue Man.

Holmes: What I would like to touch on is a personal thing. I understand that you wrote a book, an authorized biography of Red Cloud. I wish you'd touch on just a little bit about some of these more prominent people who have influenced your culture and ours in the past.

Eagle Man: I've already listed Frank Fool's Crow and Bill Eagle Feather and Ben Black Elk as my main influencers. Red Cloud was an Ogalalla chief that killed about eight soldiers for every warrior lost. His men, his warriors did that. They were very effective. We had better horses. The Army didn't want to be out there where there was torrid heat and arctic storms. It was sort of like Viet Nam. Our troops did not do well because they did not want to be over there. The Viet Cong did real well because it was their home and they were defending it.

Holmes: You were in that war, were you not?

Eagle Man: Oh yeah. I flew 110 combat missions over in Vietnam, so I know what I'm talking about. I've been there. The Viet Cong were very, very effective fighters, and the NVA. The Sioux were very effective. We had better horses, and our horses were trained, and could go a long distance, where the Army horses could go only so far. They'd string them out, turn them around and get them all strung out and you could very effectively kill them off. So we wagonboxed fought. We took the good guns away from them. So the Army kept us supplied.

Holmes: So you got them with their own weapons, so to speak.

Eagle Man: We won the Treaty of 1868 and the Army burnt the forts down on the Bozeman Trail after we signed that treaty. So I'd say we must have won it.

Holmes: Was Red Cloud effective in that?

Eagle Man: He was the one that won it. He was the most effective chief. Now along comes Ted Turner with his television show and tries to pit Indian against Indian, pits Crazy Horse against Red Cloud. That was no way. Red Cloud was so—he didn't trust the government and the Treaty says "all the land west of the Missouri River past the Black Hills would be land for us forever, for as long as the grass grow, for as long as the rivers flow, for as long as the dead lie buried." He said, I will not take up the sword when he signed that treaty. He expected the Army would be the same way. So he thought that if he would have taken up the sword, and if he would have joined that battle at Little Big Horn, then they would have said, well this cancels the Treaty. He wanted that land for the Sioux forever. So he couldn't fight. But Ted Turner never mentions that at all because he had to make Red Cloud look bad. It was insulting. It was like somebody trying to make George Washington look bad for the White People.

Holmes: Sometimes, when we have that kind of polarity consciousness of us against you, we must do that.

Eagle Man: They wanted to put a polarity there between Crazy Horse and Red Cloud. Crazy Horse was just busy fighting for survival. He didn't have this big animosity going with Red Cloud. Anybody who kills eight soldiers for every warrior you lose, and fights battle after battle and fights in the wintertime, you've got to give Red Cloud tremendous credit He did this. He won it, hands down, that's that

Holmes: What about Crazy Horse, how did he differ from Red Cloud and some of the others? How did some of these people differ from one another, like Red Cloud and Crazy Horse?

Eagle Man: They were basically pretty much the same because they were all spiritual. They were all religious. They all believed in Creator. They all had to endure to become a warrior. They had the common goals. I think they had a very, very strong commonality.

Holmes: I understand Crazy Horse learned how to teach you all to fight against the White people by watching the White people. Is that true?

Eagle Man: Red Cloud proved that he was the most effective of all when you did what Red Cloud did. I'm sure Crazy Horse learned from what Red Cloud's tactics were.

I'm sure Sitting Bull was the same. Yet they were good warriors in their own right. They just perfected. The Sioux were always adapting. They always took what they learned, and then they perfected it.

Holmes: A lot of people like to think of indigenous people in these tribes as warlike to start with, like they like war.

Eagle Man: It’s the biggest lie in the world. We were very peaceful people. We had to fight to survive because we were pushed back upon each other. I could take 100 White people, put them in an airplane and crash the airplane in the ocean and have only one opening and they’ll all be clawing and fighting to get out of that one opening. That’s exactly it, we were pushed back upon each other. For thousands of years, we never overpopulated the land. We never evolved beyond the bow or the spear because we didn’t have to. Had we been so warlike we would have evolved like the White man evolved in his weaponry. He was so warlike that he perfected and perfected his weapons over and over, and now we’ve got ourselves a hydrogen bomb that can wipe out the Earth.

Holmes: Which obviously the Native Americans did not want.

Eagle Man: Here we go back to plain fact in evidence. We perfected our spirituality. We perfected our living, so we came up with democracy. The White man copied our democracy.

Holmes: Where do you see from your ancient times you developed this, simply because you were land and nature-oriented beings to start with?

Eagle Man: Sure. The greatest teacher in the world is nature because it’s made directly by Creator. You don’t have to go through anybody. It’s directly from nature to you. When I have to go through some black book written by hundreds of White men and reinterpreted by them, there’s no education in there for me out of that black book.

Holmes: Some scientists say there is no life elsewhere in the universe.

Eagle Man: They have to say that because they’re probably Christians, they’re too hung up on their religion. But if they really look at plain fact in evidence, a star is made the same way. Just about every star probably has planets surrounding it. The Great Spirit makes everything for a reason. Every star has this mysterious life energy in it. The sun. And it’s surrounded by these planets. It’s obvious that the Creator has made them for life. Also we have millions of years of existence. Billions of years of existence going on. Some stars are way ahead of us or way behind us, so you get different time spans here. It’s very hard for a European to think this way because they’ve been so brainwashed by Christianity, they can’t think in any other way. Some of them think that we’re only 5,000 years old or something. They get all these crazy myths. It is very difficult to talk about this to a Christian audience because their minds are so blank and so locked into fallacy.

Holmes: We are a Freethought audience. We have a little bit more open concept, I hope.

Eagle Man: This would have to be for all more open-minded people. If you look at creation, you can see it from Hubble telescope. Now this creation has a commonality to it and it replicates and it duplicates. Creator makes everything in duplicate, replicate. Look at all us humans running around. We’re all replicates of each other, my different skin, yet we all have a duplication and we still get our individuality. It’s possible we could have come from the stars.

Or we could have evolved out from creation right here. I’m not going to argue about that because I don’t know. I think it’s foolish to argue about it. You are foolish and narrow-minded to exclude all the possibilities.

Holmes: Exactly. Thank you. When you say, for example, your spiritual commonality to everything, please explain a little bit more about some of your prophecies.

Eagle Man: There are Sioux prophecies, the Blue Man. That’s very obvious in Black Elk’s vision. He is here right now and he is destroying the Earth, Mother Earth is very concerned about it and many have tried to kill the Blue Man. Black Elk was able to kill the Blue Man because he had the powers of the Six Powers of the Universe, he killed it with his spear that was given to him by the West Power. So knowledge is the only thing that’s going to save this planet. We have to have knowledge to keep down our birth, our population growth, the pollution, etc. These are strong, strong possibilities.

Also, nature does use its own curative effects. I think these asteroids running around right now could impact the Earth and wipe out millions of people, and it’s probably going to happen, because as I said, nature replicates and duplicates, does it not?

Holmes: Yes.

Eagle Man: Other asteroids have hit this earth and only wiped out the dinosaurs. These things that happened before will happen again.

Holmes: Is there anything else that you’d like to teach us about our ancestry or your belief systems?

Eagle Man: That's about it. The main thing, whoever you are, —whatever you believeobserve, observe, observe, and don't lock off into stereotype or shoot your big mouth off thaty you know everything, because we really know very little. It's all mystery and it's a beautiful mystery.

Holmes: So humility is important for you.

Eagle Man: It's a very benevolent mystery.

Holmes: Thank you so much. I bless you and thank you and Metakyasen Aho.

Eagle Man: Aho. Bye.

 

Jean Holmes is the president of Religious Research, an organization founded by James Hervey Johnson.

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NOTES FROM THE EDITOR:
Free Exercise of Religion

In this issue we are exploring Native American spirituality and, to some degree, the oppression of this spirituality by the majority white Anglo-Saxon culture. (How politically correct can we get?) As it turns out, a very important battle over the free exercise of religion is going on right now, and it began with the oppression of Native American spirituality, not in 1890, but in 1990.

In Oregon a Native American was fired for using peyote, not on the job but in a Native Americans religious ceremony. He applied for unemployment compensation and was denied. He sued, claiming discrimination against his religion by the state. The case, Employment division v. Smith, went to the U. S. Supreme Court, and in 1990 the Court ruled against the Native American. It was in this case that Justice Antonin Scalia wrote his infamous comment about the free exercise of religion being a "luxury." People of all religions and political views were so outraged at this 5-4 decision that they appealed to Congress to overturn it. The result was the Religious Freedom Restoration Act, passed into law in 1993. Before the Smith case, courts had held that the government had to show "compelling interest" when coercively interfering with the free exercise of religion. Scalia did away with that. Congress with the RFRA restored that standard.

Now the RFRA itself is under attack. By now we have four years of case law, showing that the RFRA has been necessary and useful. However, government and its friends have fought back, trying to get the RFRA declared unconstitutional as an imposition on judicial authority. There is a case now before the Supreme Court, City of Boerne v. Flores, where the Court will decide whether to honor Congress' reading of the Free Exercise clause of the Bill of Rights. Ironically, the institution whose free exercise is being challenged is the Roman Catholic Church, the very body whose misgivings about religious liberty delayed passage of the RFRA by about two years. St. Peter the Apostle Catholic Church in Boerne, Texas has a congregation that is outgrowing its edifice, and the church wants to remodel and expand the church building. The City of Boerne decided that the building is a historical monument of sorts, and it refused a building permit. The church sued under the RFRA, lost at the district court level, but won at the appellate level. Boerne, as stubborn as Texans come, has appealed the case to the Supreme Court, and the Court has decided to hear it. A decision may be handed down around the end of June 1997. Lovers of religious freedom are watching this case closely. There is an excellent review of it in the February 1997 issue of Church & State, the publication of Americans United for the Separation of Church and State.

William B. Lindley

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