I am a newbie here and this will probably be my only post. I found this thread through google and I have first-hand knowledge and experience with this person, having been an "apprentice" myself and ingested more peyote than I care to think about. This information is accurate through 1990 and comes from my first-hand experience. I was there. It took a few years to grow up and realize what a piece of work this guy really is. I voluntarily left the group after serving Dills for about 8 years.
For the purposes of this public post I do not wish to identify myself. But I can answer any other inquiries or follow-up, if needed, privately through email or by phone. This is real.
Jerry Dills goes by several names, including Macaki Peshewa, and another name Neishte. They are all the same person. Dills administers peyote ceremonies in his home in Strawberry Plains, TN without a valid DEA permit. He claims affiliation with the United Remnant Band of Shawnee based in Ohio, where a priest there ("Chief Hawk Pope") did have a peyote permit. Dills does not have a permit and uses this borrowed permit to have peyote delivered to his home. He has, for several decades, administered peyote to young college students (including myself) who he taps into to become "Indian" enough to work for him for free. However, he has no standing to do this, hiding behind his "priesthood" and "Indian" in general and wowing starry-eyed wannabes with peyote trips using a borrowed permit.
Dills has created numerous corporations, and all share the same board members who play musical chairs. These Tennessee-based corporations include Tennessee Indian Council (nonprofit), Native American Indian Media Corp (nonprofit), Systems Theories and Human Development Corp, Native American Church, and several others. All are comprised of the same small core group of people since inception. Take a look Dills' resume (in the name of Macaki Peshewa) and every corporation listed is his. Dills uses theses corporations as mirrors reflecting and referencing themselves, to cast the illusion of an entity larger than the 1/2 dozen (or less) core people it all boils down to. A review of these corporate documents will show the same people running these companies from the same location. It's all bullshit.
Dills engineered the takeover of the Tennessee Indian Council (TIC) board of directors in the mid 1980s in order to take control of the largest bingo game in Tennessee, which was operated in Memphis under the TIC charter. Dills operated that game until bingo was made illegal in TN in the late 1980s. He then moved his bingo operation to Spartanburg, South Carolina where it fizzled out by around 1988.
Also in the late 1980s, Dills and the Tennessee Indian Council was under investigation by a federal grand jury in Nashville, TN at the time, them being among the targets of the investigation, as they were informed at the time by the federal prosecutor. The grand jury was investigating bingo, and Dills was subpoenaed to testify. However, Dills never testified because he had a real good attorney at the time (Lionel Barret of Nashville, TN) who shielded him from appearing. The grand jury also subpoenaed all corporate documents of the Tennessee Indian Council, which was delivered to the prosecutor in Nashville. Nothing came of that investigation. Soon after the TN legislature made bingo illegal, so Dills moved his game to SC, using Native American Indian Media Corp. as the front for that game.
Dills claims to have numerous PhDs, however, they are all from unknown universities. The primary source of his doctorates are from the "Native Americas University" based in Mexico, supposedly. While convenient for Dills at the time because this information was not easily verified, in today's world of internet, there is no internet reference to Native Americas University found. There is no way to verify his stated education, which apparently is entirely bogus. Dills did audit some classes at the University of Tennessee in Knoxville, but has no degrees from that school or any school or university in the U.S. Dills was illiterate until his early 20s and reads and writes at about the 6th grade level.
His claim to education in Mexico is dubious, as he also claims to have been a member of Carlos Casteneda's party (Teachings of Don Juan). Sounded good at the time. His PhD's are in "Systems and Theories" and another in "Human Development." That's what's on his resume.
Dills primarily uses the NAC as a personal tax haven, claiming to be grandfathered as a church. However, he has probably delluded himself with his own bullshit. Dills (aka Peshewa) has at various times claimed to be the reincarnation of Jesus Christ, as well as the "chosen one" and adopted the name Neishte as another alias in order to cloak himself in prophetic trappings. He claims special spiritual knowledge and seeks followers, so in his mind he is real.
With the advent of the internet, Dills grabbed numerous domain names, including
www.NativeAmericanChurch.com,
www.indianreader.com,
www.thesantaclaus.org,
www.neishtekiva.com,
www.beyondprophecy.com, among them. As with his corporations, Dills uses these websites to reflect and reference themselves, but it remains the same small core of people. The names on those websites are the same folks who run the corporations, the church, and all that was true through 1990.
None of the materials on these sites is current. For example, the Indian Reader website is relying on a few issues of a newsletter which was published in the mid 1980s, and all the materials on that website are from published print materials dated 1986 or before. Dills stretches everything he can to the max in terms of self-adulation, and this is a good example of reusing old stuff to cast the illusion of actually doing something or being something.
It's unfortunate that he has the domain name NativeAmericanChurch.com as this ensures he hits high in internet google searches. A review of the guestbooks on these sites reveals the sad truth that many of the legitimate members of the church think this is the official site. Go and read some of those guestbook entries and you'll see responses from all over the world. This is really sad and an unfortunate consequence of Dills grabbing this domain first.
The Native American Church of Strawberry Plains, TN is questionable at best, fraudulent at worst, and relies on a borrowed peyote permit to administer ceremonies to which Dills is ill-suited to perform. To call Jerry Neal Dills (a/k/a Dr. Macaki Peshewa a/k/a Neishte) a charlatan would be too kind. Other than peyote ceremonies, Dills does not administer any other ceremonies, at all. It is of note that no "real" skins hang out with Dills for very long. No wonder.
As stated, this information is accurate through 1990 and and is based on my personal, first-hand experience. Some of the information I present here is from observation and conversation and cannot be verified. But much of the information can be verified, for example, the peyote use, which requires a signature on the DEA form when UPS delivers the stuff, as well as the bingo information. The corporate structures. Things like that can be verified. It's quite possible some of the conditions may have changed. However, since Dills has ongoing, active live websites as of today promoting peyote use, as well as his personal and corporate agenda, it is doubtful much has changed at all. Probably just more of the same.
