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The Issue
Mining, logging, dams and other forms of economic development have a long and continuing history of destroying ceremonial sites. Today, rock climbers, New Age pilgrims, photographers, anthropologists and skiers present surprising new threats. Some members of these groups feel that native peoples’ efforts to protect sacred sites are a political ploy to regain control of lost lands. Determined government bureaucrats have taken the unusual position of supporting native people’s struggle to secure religious freedom. Fundamental to our story is a clash of world views: a utilitarian view of the earth as an economic resource, and a spiritual view of land as animated by ancestral spirits and mysterious forces that create cultures, traditions—and conflicts. As one native elder put it, “This is not a playground. This is sacred ground.” This story’s implications are profound, not just for its constitutional consequences, but for the questions that confront America’s future as a multicultural society: can we accommodate such diverse cultures, histories, and philosophies into our educational system and our land-use policies? Must the “majority” (who do not practice land-based religions, but nevertheless have relationships with special places) sacrifice rights to use public lands or pursue happiness (through private property ownership) to protect “minority” religions? Will millennia-old philosophies be sacrificed for economic prosperity? For many Americans, Indian and non-Indian, the Holy Land is here. We all want to protect certain places. Whether those special places are on public land or private property, how does our society decide how best to protect them and who may use them? While we debate, Native Americans are still losing ground—sacred ground. See some relevant U.S. laws and court cases involving sacred sites |
Freedom of religion is one of the fundamental values in American society. For indigenous communities such as the Wintu, Hopi and Lakota, the earth is sacred, and their religious practices hinge on their responsibility to take care of the natural world by performing ceremonies that are linked to specific places. However, the mainstream society’s value of religious freedom does not apply to this indigenous philosophy and the practices that have grown from it. Land-based religions were not in the minds of the founding fathers when they wrote the First Amendment, nor are they understood by the American public today. What is our society’s responsibility to Americans who have been forced off their homelands, politically and economically dispossessed, and even massacred for their beliefs? These acts seem unthinkable now, but the denial of religious freedom to land-based religions is a continuation of our nation’s old ways of dealing with the "Indian problem."