Dark cloud over peyote still lingers

FOUNTAIN GREEN — The medicine man had spread his blanket across the wild grass when a hummingbird appeared above him.

It hovered near his head for a moment and then darted into a grove of aspen trees. The medicine man smiled at the sign he obviously believed was divine.

"That means joy," James "Flaming Eagle" Mooney said Wednesday to a group sitting crosslegged around him in a remote canyon between Utah and Sanpete counties. "The birds tell me what I need to do."

He lifted his pipe to the sky, kissed it and pressed it against the beads covering his chest. "Bless them with tolerance," he prayed.

For four years, since his arrest for giving peyote to people who are not American Indians, Mooney has prayed for understanding.

Last week, the Utah Supreme Court ruled he could give peyote — a mind-altering drug — to members of his church, regardless of race.

For Mooney, the ruling was indeed an answer to prayer. But for others, the decision spells trouble.

Some members of the Native American church, of which Mooney is a member, worry the ruling will result in peyote restrictions for American Indians, while law enforcement officers say it will make cracking down on illicit use of the drug much harder.

"There's no way to prove someone doesn't belong to the Native American Church because it's not your typical hierarchal, monolithic church," said Dave Wayment, a deputy Utah County attorney. "As a practical matter, it will kill peyote prosecution in Utah."

On Wednesday, Mooney traveled to a spot near the small town of Fountain Green to hold his first ceremony since the Utah Supreme Court decision.

There he met a group that included several herb farmers who sought his blessing. He took them down a rugged dirt road that sliced through a hillside of scrub oak and aspen trees before they came to a secluded canyon of red rock and wild grasses.

He stopped briefly in a large teepee, built on the banks of a dry creek bed, before deciding it wasn't the right spot. Up a rocky road he trekked, his followers in tow, until they arrived at a clearing.

"Logic would say I would hold it in the teepee," he explained. "But I try to follow the spirit."

From a bag he took the tools of his trade: a large fan made of eagle feathers, a ceramic pot full of herbs he would smoke and a bottle of Peruvian holy oil. He poured the scented oil in his hands and clapped.

The ceremony had begun.