the racist war against the native american church...,

nativeamericanchurches | Like the miner’s canary, the Indian marks the shifts from fresh air to poison gas in our political atmosphere: and our treatment of Indians, even more than our treatment of other minorities, reflects the rise and fall in our democratic faith” Felix S. Cohen 

The Genealogy of James Warren ‘Flaming Eagle’ Mooney (James) shows he is an American Native Black Seminole, and a bloodline descendant of Seminole Medicine Man and War Chief Osceola (1804 –1838) and his escaped African American slave wife (Name, date of birth and death unknown).  James is also the namesake and bloodline descendant of one James Mooney (02/10/1861 – 12/22/1921), Irish-Scottish son of Irish Catholic immigrants, and American born U.S. Citizen.  James Mooney was employed as an Ethnologist at the Smithsonian Institute, Washington D.C. (1885 – 1921). Here is an account of three men that did everything in their power to assist the indigenous peoples and preserve their ancient spiritual ceremonies. Without their efforts, it is possible that the American Native spiritual ceremonies and peoples of North America may not have survived the repeated atrocities perpetrated or supported by misguided United States Bureau of Indian Affairs for more than 100 years. 

Osceola (Billy Powell), Medicine Man and War Chief (1804-1838) was an influential Seminole leader who fought the United States to a standstill in the Florida Everglades during the second Seminole War, also known as the Florida War of 1835.  James’s ancestral family fought the U.S. military in an attempt to stop the expulsion of our First Nations people from their ancestral homeland. They strongly resisted efforts to bring about the deliberate annihilation of their indigenous earth based religious culture.

In 1918, James’s forefather James Mooney fought a war of words before Congress, successfully halting the passage of a Peyote law that was designed to make illegal the entire American Native way of life. Pointedly, the dominant Christian religious mainstream sought to end our earth-based ceremonies and healing and empowerment rites, supplanting these traditions with those imported from across the seas.  More recently, the efforts to deny constitutionally guaranteed religious freedom have been promoted and enforced by a federal agency known as the Bureau of Indian Affairs (BIA).  James’s great grandfather’s successful defense of our sacrament before Congress was a first step in a long journey to restore and maintain our ancient religious heritage.  Later in that same year, he persuaded a group of Oklahoma American Native Spiritual leaders, gathered by Frank Eagle (Ponca Tribe), and wrote the by-laws that incorporated the first United States Native American Church  (est. El Reno, Oklahoma, 1918).  He astutely sought to use the laws of the insurgent intruders to protect the sacred use of the Native American Church’s indigenous religious ceremonies.  Sadly,  establishment of the Native American Church has, until recently, only provided nominal legal protection for the rights of its members.

James Mooney understood the relentless nature of the illegal and immoral political maneuvers designed to outlaw the First Nation’s entire earth-honoring religion. He foresaw the overwhelming influences of zealot religious ministries from a variety of churches, conspiring with greedy business owners seeking profits at any cost.  These political factions have continued for decades to persuade the BIA to attempt to outlaw many practices of the Native American Church, supplanting our religious ceremonies with  ‘modern’ alternatives that, in some cases, violate the very spirit of our understanding and our way of life.

As James Mooney predicted, our indigenous religious culture would endure decades of anti-American Native spiritual edicts and activities, enacted and propagated by the BIA.  This agency has repeatedly conspired with the entire United States Judicial system, including but not exclusive to the United States Attorney General’s Office, through State, County and City Attorney’s offices, in an orchestrated effort to continue to deny the civil liberties of America’s First Nations.

This hierarchy has acted and conspired  to deny our religious indigenous culture the ability to practice healing and empowering spiritual ceremonies and rites honoring our ancient Mother Earth and Father Sky.