Journal looks at conflicts over Native American sacred places

A growing number of conflicts between Native Americans and federal agencies have developed over sacred places. These contentious situations arise when Indian peoples assert their right to practice aspects of their religion on places within public and private lands.

In the latest issue of Great Plains Quarterly, published by the Center for Great Plains Studies at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln, Gregory R. Campbell and Thomas A. Foor, both anthropology professors at the University of Montana, write that plains Indians practice a traditional religion integrated with the physical landscape.

"Traditional Indian peoples trace the origins of their current religious beliefs and practices back to their distant past," Campbell and Foor write. The authors state there are differences among religious beliefs, but the underlying common symbols share features in a number of sacred sites such as medicine wheels.

For centuries Native American peoples have used the Big Horn Medicine Wheel in the Bighorn Mountains of Wyoming for spiritual and ceremonial activities. Controversy arose when the Medicine Wheel was designated a national landmark, promoting the site for development as a tourist attraction. Native Americans say the Medicine Wheel is a place to which their people journey to renew a relationship with the spirits and find a sense of renewal.

Despite attempts to preserve Native sacred sites in North America, many locations have been destroyed or altered by lumbering, mining and recreational development. Campbell and Foor write, "The 1934 Wheeler-Howard Act guaranteed Native Americans the right to practice their religions, but native religions continued to be targets of suppression. Across the country, tribal peoples were denied access to their sacred lands by federal and state agencies as well as private landowners."

In 1978, President Jimmy Carter signed the American Indian Religious Freedom Act into law. This act proclaimed the policy of the United States to protect and preserve for American Indians their inherent right of freedom to believe, express and exercise their traditional religions, including access to sites. However, the new law failed in the 1988 Lyng vs. Northwest Indian Cemetery Protective Association case, when the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that "to accept the Indians' free exercise claims would amount to establishing a 'religious servitude' on public lands."

Campbell and Foor note that despite an accumulating body of laws, regulations, executive orders and policies on cultural resources and their protection, indigenous issues remain either largely ignored or a low priority in most land management decisions.

Great Plains Quarterly is edited by Charles Braithwaite and can be purchased from bookstores and from the Center for Great Plains Studies at (402) 472-3082.

CONTACTS: Charles Braithwaite, Editor, Great Plains Quarterly, (402) 472-6178
Gregory R. Campbell, Professor, Anthropology, University of Montana, (406) 243-2478
Thomas A. Foor, Professor, Anthropology, University of Montana, (406) 243-2971