This entry records that the Native American Church, a pan-tribal religious movement formally organized in the early twentieth century though drawing on considerably older practice, centers its prayer and ceremony on the sacramental use of peyote, a psychoactive cactus considered sacred within the tradition, within all-night ceremonies led by a Road Man that combine prayer, song, drumming and specific ritual structure, without describing that liturgical content here.
The Native American Church combines elements drawn from various tribal traditions with, in many congregations, explicitly Christian elements, reflecting its historical development as a distinctly pan-tribal and syncretic response to the pressures Native communities faced in the reservation era, and its ceremonies and their associated prayers vary somewhat across different chapters and regional traditions of the church while sharing the core sacramental use of peyote as their defining common feature. Because peyote ceremony is understood within the tradition as requiring proper ceremonial leadership and context, and because the Native American Church, like other traditions in this atlas, has not published its specific liturgical content for general outside use, this entry limits itself to noting the tradition's existence, its general structure and its specific legal history rather than describing its ceremonies in operational detail.