the
sacred
land reader
For use
with the fil m
in the light of
re v e re n c e
acknowledgments
The Sacred Land Reader was edited by Marjorie Beggs and
Christopher McLeod and designed by Patricia Koren.
Thanks to Adam Fish, Vicki Engel, Roz Dzelzitis, Amy
Corbin and Jessica Abbe for assistance with manuscript
preparation, research, rights clearance and proof reading.
Funding for the Reader was provided by The Ford
Foundation, Grousbeck Family Fund and Nathan
Cummings Foundation.
You may download the Reader as a pdf file at
www.sacredland.org/reader.html. Send your feedback to
slfp@igc.org. We will expand and update the Reader.
For additional information:
The Sacred Land Film Project
P.O. Box C-151
La Honda, CA 94020
slfp@igc.org
www.sacredland.org
A Project of Earth Island Institute
PHOTO CREDITS
Cover
Top: Caleen Sisk-Franco and Florence Jones, Winnemem
Wintu—by Sally Carless
Left: Headless Pictograph in Grand Gulch, Utah—by
Christopher McLeod
Right: Journey to the Rocky Mountains—courtesy NewYork Historical Society
Bottom: Johnson Holy Rock, Lakota—by Will Parrinello
Table of Contents
Thomas Banyacya, Hopi, at a sacred spring
—by Christopher McLeod
Page 6
High Country Prayer Seat in California—by Christopher
McLeod
Page 14
Christopher McLeod Filming—by Cordy Fergus
Page 16
Hand Prints on Cliff in Grand Gulch, Utah
—by Christopher McLeod
In the Light of Reverence is a presentation of
the Independent Television Service in
association with Native American Public
Telecommunications, with funding provided
by the Corporation for Public Broadcasting.
In the Light of Reverence is distributed on VHS tape and
DVD by:
Bullfrog Films
Oley PA, 19547
Tel: 800-543-3764
www.bullfrogfilms.com
Page 28
The San Francisco Peaks—by Christopher McLeod
Page 54
Southern Utah Pictograph (A.D. 1295)—by Christopher
McLeod
Page 62
Mount Shasta Woodblock—by Frank LaPena
Page 72
Hopi Ancestral Petroglyphs at Taawa—by Christopher
McLeod
©2003 Sacred Land Film Project of Earth Island Institute
Page 92
Winnemem Wintu dancers at Mt. Shasta, August 2003—
by Christopher McLeod
Table of Contents
5
Foreword
When Every Place Is Sacred
by Christopher McLeod
15
introduction
Sacred Lands and Religious Freedom
by Vine Deloria Jr.
27
Sacred Places of Native America:
A Primer to Accompany the Film
In the Light of Reverence
by Peter Nabokov
53
Managing Hopi Sacred Sites to Protect
Religious Freedom
by Leigh Kuwanwisiwma, Kurt E. Dongoske
and T. J. Ferguson
61
Wintu Sacred Geography
by Dorothea Theodoratus and Frank LaPena
71
Freedom, Law, and Prophecy:
A Brief History of Native American
Religious Resistance
by Lee Irwin
Foreword
In the Light of Reverence
WHEN EVERY PL ACE
IS SACRED
~ by Christopher McLeod
damage and the butte-owner’s comments on film
VERY WORKING DAY , bulldozers climb
during the production of In the Light of Reverence,
the back of Woodruff Butte in Arizona,
our documentary film that aired on the PBS series
quarrying gravel to pave local highways and
P.O.V. (Point of View) in August 2001 to an
tearing away rocky sites that Hopis on pilgrimage
audience of 3 million viewers. As we made the
have been visiting for a thousand years. Woodruff
film through the 1990s and then worked distribButte is now private property, and the Hopi have
uting it for the last three years, our intention has
appealed in vain to its owner to stop razing their
been to capture the intense clash between the first
shrines. In the last 10 years, all eight Hopi shrines
Americans, more than 500 distinct cultures, and
on Woodruff Butte have been destroyed.
the waves of people who came
“When we all visited the
Woodruff Butte
here from Europe, and to
property, I was told if they
show it as a clash of values, a
showed me specifically where
clash of worldviews and, at its
[a shrine] was on the propdeepest level, a metaphysical
erty, then it would not have
clash. At its heart, the clash
religious value to them anyentails very different views of
more,” said the butte’s owner,
what constitutes power and
Dale McKinnon. “In other
the appropriate human relawords, they couldn’t show me.
tionship to power. The essence
And I cannot possibly work
of this culture clash is the
around something that I can’t
question: “What is sacred?”
see. So, I guess I did bulldoze
Or, stated another way: “What
it. I couldn’t see it. I didn’t
do we as a culture value most
know what to work around.”
deeply?”
We captured the bulldozer
c h r i s to p h e r m c l e o d
E
being weakened. Yet a consensus is building across
America—and around the world—that past injustices should be rectified and the sacred places and
religious freedom of indigenous peoples respected.
That’s a good first step. But this struggle is not
just about native peoples’ sacred sites. People
everywhere have sacred places they are trying to
protect and stay connected to through ceremonies
that honor life and celebrate the diversity, power
and beauty of the natural world.
In the Light of Reverence has proven to be a
potent resource for stimulating dialogue and
reflection, exploring American history, seeking
reconciliation between conflicting cultures, and
protecting religious freedom and sacred land. The
film is supplemented by an extensive Web site, a
Teacher’s Guide, a DVD, (which includes
additional scenes, an extended interview with
Lakota scholar Vine Deloria Jr., interviews with
the filmmakers, and an update about other
threatened places like Zuni Salt Lake in New
Mexico and Quechan Indian Pass in California),
and now this Sacred Land Reader.
You can participate in this educational process
by exploring the following essays, learning more
about the issues, and discussing them with your
classmates, friends, family and community. If you
want to go further and take action, you can join
the Sacred Land Defense Team (see details at end
of this foreword).
Making the Film: Learning New
Truths
Cameraman John Knoop films petroglyphs in the Southwest
TRYING TO TRANSL ATE three stories of sacred
c h r i s to p h e r m c l e o d
SACRED LAND READER
•6•
Before we completed the film, I journeyed to
the Hopi mesas to show a rough cut to the Hopis
who had participated in the making of the film.
When my old friend Fermina Banyacya heard
Dale McKinnon’s statement about bulldozing the
Hopi shrines, she began to shake her head.
“What is it with white people?” she whispered.
“Seeing is believing, and that’s all there is to it. It
makes me so mad!”
Though sacred mountains may be visible, it is
the invisible realm that holds the key to
understanding the sites Native Americans hold
most precious. Their songs and stories, visions
and prophecies, secret traditions passed down
from the ancestors—these are the intangible
cultural practices that honor the life force of the
land and carry deep emotional power for the
communities that inhabit and protect America’s
sacred places. Yet the American public has little
understanding of Native American sacred
landscapes, and it was to fill this educational need
that we set out to make the film.
Imagine your birthplace, the burial grounds of
your family, or your place of worship besieged and
bulldozed. What would you do?
Lands sacred to Native Americans are
threatened by the relentless push for energy
resources, timber, minerals, water, recreational
opportunities, luxury homes, archaeological
excavations and New Age ceremonies. Protections
granted to sacred sites in recent decades are now
being overturned, and carefully crafted laws are
places and the people who care for them into a
coherent film took 10 long years. With funding
from the Independent Television Service and
Native American Public Telecommunications,
co-producer Malinda Maynor (a member of the
Lumbee nation), writer Jessica Abbe, editor Will
Parrinello and I spent a year editing the 118 hours
of footage down to 73 minutes. Distribution
funding from the Cummings and Ford
c h r i s to p h e r m c l e o d
•7•
FOREWORD
Foundations allowed us to
the San Francisco Peaks,
screen the film in many
home of the ancestral
places—from Native
kachina spirits. The White
American communities to
Vulcan Mine (at left),
Capitol Hill—and there
which was providing
have been many surprises
pumice to soften stonealong the way.
washed jeans, was closed
When we started
following an intense
making the film, we
campaign by 13 local
envisioned threats to
tribes and the Sierra Club.
sacred sites that were
Their efforts prompted
White Vulcan Mine in the San Francisco Peaks
primarily industrial—
former Interior Secretary
mining, logging, mega-ski
Bruce Babbitt to broker a
resorts and more. But we found that native people
federal buy-out of the mine for $1 million.
are equally concerned about rock climbers who
Yet, as narrator Peter Coyote says at the film’s
scale sacred places and New Age spiritual seekers
conclusion: “Protections granted by federal land
who sing songs, beat drums, make exotic
managers are vulnerable to shifts in the political
pilgrimages and hold expensive healing workshops winds.” The ascension of George W. Bush and his
at Indian ceremonial sites. Well-intentioned baby
corporate colleagues has been a giant step backboomers, it appears, are impacting sacred lands,
ward in the historic struggle to protect Native
too.
American sacred places.
Another surprise had to do with the evolution
of federal land management policies. For more
than 100 years, the U.S. government repressed
Bush’s New Assault on Sacred
and even outlawed native religious ceremonies.
Lands
The right to practice indigenous religions in the
United States actually had to be affirmed by an act
BEFORE A SCREENING of In the Light of
of Congress. The repression officially ended in
Reverence at Arizona State University in early
1978 with passage of the American Indian
2003, Cal Seciwa (Zuni), the director of A.S.U.’s
Religious Freedom Act.
American Indian Institute, unfurled a canvas
Given the long history of religious persecution,
banner across a table.
we were surprised to encounter enlightened
The banner was a prototype for a billboard
government land managers who were struggling
to incorporate respect for native traditions into
official U.S. policy. Deb Liggett, former superintendent of Devils Tower National Monument,
brought rock climbers and Plains Indians together
for two years of conversation that has reduced
climbing at Devils Tower by 85%. Sharon
Heywood, superintendent of the Shasta-Trinity
protesting the Salt River Project’s planned 18,000National Forest, refused to permit a new ski resort acre coal stripmine, which threatens to dry up a
on Mt. Shasta after hearing native peoples’ condesert lake in New Mexico that the Zuni believe is
cerns about the potential impact of the proposed
the home of Salt Mother, an important protector
development on the mountain’s sacred sites.
spirit.
In Hopi country, there also was good news at
“We had signed a contract with Clear Channel,
c h r i s to p h e r m c l e o d
SACRED LAND READER
•8•
which owns virtually all of
Griles, a former mining
the billboards in Phoenix,”
industry lobbyist, and
said Seciwa, “and we mailed
signed by Rebecca Watson,
it to them with a check,
a long-time advocate for
but the company’s presimining interests.
dent called and said they
Another troubling case
couldn’t put this message
is Indian Pass, in the
on a billboard. So now
California desert, where
freedom of speech has
the Clinton administrajoined freedom of religion
tion completed a six-year
as a casualty of our
public process by denying
struggle.”
a permit for Glamis Gold’s
Cal and I stretched the
cyanide heap-leach openbanner out and taped it to
pit mine in an area vital to
the wall of the screening
the Quechan people. The
room at KAET, the local
Quechan have used a
public television station
network of trails and cereSign
outside
the
Hopi
village
of
Oraibi
(1979)
that was hosting our film
monial sites there for
screening as part of an
10,000 years. Soon after
A.S.U. conference on “Ethics When Cultures
being sworn into office, Interior Secretary Gale
Clash.” The station manager walked by, looked
Norton re-opened the permit process for the gold
quizzically at the banner, stopped, frowned.
mine, and though DOI and Glamis officials met
“Is there a problem?” Cal asked.
numerous times before Norton’s decision was
“Yeah, I think there might be,” replied the
announced, members of the Quechan Nation
station manager.
read about it in the newspaper. They were not
“Kind of proves the point of this conference,
consulted as required by law.
doesn’t it?” asked Cal.
An incensed Senator Barbara Boxer (D, CA)
After a long pause, the station manager said,
triggered an investigation by DOI’s Inspector
“You’re right. Leave it up.”
General when she wrote, “Secretary Norton
While liberty hangs by a few strips of duct tape
worked previously for the Mountain States Legal
in public television stations and universities
Foundation, which advocates for mining concerns;
across America, it is all but dead in the corporateDeputy Secretary Steven Griles worked previously
government world.
for the National Mining Association; Counsel to
The Zuni battle is one of dozens across the
the Secretary Ann Klee worked for the American
United States in which new permits issued by the
Mining Congress and is married to a partner in
Bush administration threaten culturally signifithe law firm (Crowell and Moring) that reprecant places, or where protections previously
sents Glamis Gold Ltd.; Assistant Secretary of
granted are being reversed. In many cases, adminLand and Minerals Management Rebecca Watson
istration officials hired straight from the energy
worked for the law firm that represents Glamis
industry are approving new energy extraction
Gold Ltd. and represented at least one gold mining
projects and overturning established federal policompany; and Timothy McCrum, a member of
cies intended to protect sacred places on public
Secretary Norton’s transition team, represents
lands. The Department of Interior (DOI) permit
Glamis Gold Ltd. and did at the time he
approving the new Salt River Project coal mine
participated on the transition team.”
near Zuni Salt Lake was championed by Steven
On March 12, 2003, Inspector General Earl
c h r i s to p h e r m c l e o d
desecration of a place of prayer and renewal—and
the electricity will go out of state!”
At Black Mesa, in northern Arizona, Peabody
Energy said publicly that it intended to stop
pumping 3.3 million gallons of groundwater every
day for its 273-mile-long coal slurry pipeline, but
then Peabody applied to the Office of Surface
Mining (OSM) for a permit to expand the coal
stripmine and increase pumping by 32 percent. As
word spread through Hopi villages and Navajo
homesteads, strong opposition mounted and OSM
cancelled public hearings on the proposal. Then,
in an attempt to secure an alternative water
source, Senator Jon Kyl (R, AZ) tried to attach a
rider to an appropriations bill that would have
authorized a new pump station on the Colorado
River inside Grand Canyon National Park, and a
pipeline up Jackass Canyon to Black Mesa to
replace the groundwater that is being pumped
into the slurryline. A firestorm of protest stopped
the rider, but some water transfer scheme will
undoubtedly be revived in the future.
Native activists are fighting hard. The Zuni
Tribe recently formed a Zuni Salt Lake Coalition
and is planning a breach of trust lawsuit against
DOI that will require a new EIS to adequately
study the complex hydrology of
the area. The Quechan Tribe
worked to pass legislation in
California to require backfilling
and reclamation of open pit
mines, as well as another state
bill to protect sacred places.
The Pit River Tribe and
environmental allies have filed
a suit challenging the validity
of the leases around Medicine
Lake and are pressuring the
Calvert Social Investment Fund
to divest its holdings in
Calpine. The grassroots Hopi
organization Black Mesa Trust
has sued DOI and also gained
The late Hopi elder Thomas Banyacya makes an offering in the
standing with the California
Great Kiva at Chaco Canyon
Public Utilities Commission in
•9•
FOREWORD
Devaney concluded, “No undue influence or
conflict of interest affected the decision-making
process.” The report documented 30 contacts
between the Interior Secretary’s office and Glamis,
including nine face-to-face meetings, and none
with the Quechan.
Meanwhile, at northern California’s Medicine
Lake, a vision questing area of great importance to
the Pit River Tribe, Bush administration officials
in the Bureau of Land Management and Forest
Service in November 2002 reversed minimal
protections provided just two years earlier, and
approved a geothermal power plant within one
mile of the lake. Calpine Corp. is drilling exploratory wells, and a humming industrial labyrinth of
roads and transmission towers, lit 24 hours a day,
is being planned for this remote mountainous
area east of Mt. Shasta. The leases were initially
signed and then renewed for 10 years without any
government-to-government consultation, and no
Environmental Impact Statement (EIS) was
prepared.
“Enron and others manipulated an energy
crisis and Governor Gray Davis panicked,” says
Pit River activist Mickey Gemmill. “Now,
California taxpayer money is subsidizing the
and religious practitioners. Meanwhile, Senator
Ben Nighthorse Campbell (R, CO) has invited the
coalition to draft legislation for him to introduce,
and in California, both a statewide sacred site
protection bill and a coastal zone sacred site bill
are moving forward.
Other battles rage on—at the Missouri River,
where Army Corps of Engineers dams and
reservoirs erode cultural and burial sites; at Mt.
Graham in Arizona, where two of seven planned
telescopes have been built on the sacred peak; at
the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge in Alaska,
where oil exploration threatens caribou calving
grounds; at Yucca Mountain in Nevada, where a
c h r i s to p h e r m c l e o d
SACRED LAND READER
• 10 •
an effort to shut down the air-polluting Mohave
Generating Station in southern Nevada, which
consumes the coal and water from Black Mesa.
A new Sacred Lands Protection Coalition has
linked many native communities and tribal
leaders in a broader resistance movement, and the
coalition will soon expand to include environmental and religious groups. These efforts led to a
series of Congressional Oversight Hearings in
2002 and 2003 on threats to sacred lands.
Members of the coalition are also urging Rep.
Nick Rahall (D, WV) to rewrite and strengthen
his Native American Sacred Lands Act (H.R. 2419)
through closer consultation with tribal leaders
FLORENCE JONES, WINNEMEM WINTU, LEADS FIRE CEREMONY AT MT. SHASTA
“If you look at the earth, there are certain places that seem to have power,
and we don’t know what kind of power it is, except you have a different feeling,
you feel energized. That’s why in a lot of the ceremonies you simply go out
into the land at a certain place under supervision of a medicine man and open
yourself up. And what I think is powerful about these religions is that you
can continue to have revelations. All the revelation is telling you is how you
and your community, at this time in life, can adjust to the rest of the world.
So, it’s not like we designated a place and said, ‘This is going to be sacred.’
It came out of a lot of experience. The idea is not to pretend to own it,
not to exploit it, but to respect it. Trying to get people to see that
that’s a dimension of religion is really difficult.”
—
VINE DELORIA JR., FROM IN THE LIGHT OF REVERENCE
nuclear waste repository is being built; and at Bear
Butte in South Dakota, where a proposed rifle
range threatens to destroy the silence needed for
vision quests, prayer ceremonies and sweat lodges.
The attack on sacred places goes on.
Keeping the Sacred in Sight
WHY SHOULD people care about Native
Which Lens to Choose?
AS WE SHOT and edited In the Light of Reverence,
we struggled with the challenge of how to tell this
complex story and simultaneously make a film
that would be educational and promote progressive
social change. We looked at various themes and
considered the best frame of reference:
A public relations or lobbying campaign
usually focuses on a single theme, hones the
message and sticks to it. But all of these themes
are relevant to the complex issue of Native
American sacred lands. Probing the ethical dimensions of sacred lands involves looking through all
of these lenses, because each reflects different
values, social priorities and responsibilities.
In the end, the documentary medium supplied
our answer. Film is driven by conflict. As we edited
the film and wrote draft after draft of narration,
we realized that raising questions and stimulating
dialogue would be far more appropriate than
trying to dictate answers. Our focus became the
culture clash, the collision of world views.
The Sacred Land Reader has the same basic
intent as the film, but the written word gives us
more room to explore and probe, plus the flexibility to look through a variety of different lenses.
c h r i s to p h e r m c l e o d
• Religious freedom
• Protection of biological and cultural diversity
• Environmental justice
• Designation and management of protected
areas, parks and wilderness
• Historic preservation
• Indigenous peoples’ rights to sovereignty,
intellectual property, traditional homelands
Cameraman Will Parrinello and soundman Andy Black
film Dalton Taylor, Hopi, at the Grand Canyon
• 11 •
FOREWORD
America’s sacred places?
This struggle goes beyond environmental concerns about preserving biological and cultural
diversity, extracting resources like water, coal,
gold, and old growth timber, or dumping of toxic
waste on Indian lands. It goes beyond the philoophical values we ascribe to religious freedom and
environmental justice. It goes to our deepest need
for meaning, identity and connection to home, to
place, to community and to that elusive presence
we call “the sacred.”
What can each of us do to protect sacred sites?
We can start by looking at the world in a new way,
seeing beyond the superficial satisfactions of our
consumer culture and reconnecting with what is
most important in our own lives. Ask yourself:
“What places are sacred to me and to my ancestors? What do I value about the land and the place
I call home?”
Most of us consider ourselves to be environmentalists, but now we have to do more: incorporate sacred land into models for sustainable
economic development, and reach consensus on
SACRED LAND READER
• 12 •
which places are so important to the local community that they must be protected or restored,
with Native Americans at the table and directing
the dialogue. The result will be a big step toward
reconciliation with our history, with the earth and
with indigenous peoples.
All of creation is sacred, not just a few “sacred
places,” and many others besides Native
Americans feel this. We need to start living in
recognition of this fact so we can protect the
places we love, the land that sustains us.
Surely we are a big enough country—both in
geography and in spirit—to respect and protect
America’s sacred lands.
CHRISTOPHER (TOBY) MCLEOD directs Earth
Island Institute’s Sacred Land Film Project. He
produced the award-winning PBS film on Native
American sacred places, In the Light of Reverence
(2001). He is also a photographer and writer, and
has worked with indigenous communities for 25
years. McLeod’s other films include The Four
Corners: A National Sacrifice Area? (1983),
Downwind/Downstream (1988), Poison in the
Rockies (1990), Voices of the Land (1990) and
The Cracking of Glen Canyon Damn—With
Edward Abbey and Earth First! (1982).
The Sacred L and Reader
Kuwanwisiwma, and archaeologists Kurt E.
Dongoske and T J. Ferguson.
This first edition of The Sacred Land Reader
concludes with “Freedom, Law, and Prophecy:
A Brief History of Native American Religious
Resistance,” by historian Lee Irwin, a chronicle
of how the U.S. government and missionaries
suppressed Indian religions for 100 years.
We hope you enjoy The Sacred Land Reader and
will explore our Web site—www.sacredland.org—
to learn more about threatened sacred places and
what you can do to help protect them.
WHAT YOU CAN DO : To help support the
grassroots struggles mentioned above, we have
created a Sacred Land Defense Team. You can join
by visiting the Sacred Land Film Project Web site
at www.sacredland.org; by e-mailing your contact
info to slfp@igc.org; or by writing to: Sacred Land
Film Project, P.O. Box C-151, La Honda, CA
94020. Learn more about threatened sacred places
at www.sacredland.org/involved.html.
• 13 •
FOREWORD
RESPECT AND PROTECTION start with understanding. The Sacred Land Reader compiles some of
the last 10 years’ best essays exploring the
meaning and importance of sacred places:
Lakota scholar Vine Deloria Jr., wrote “Sacred
Lands and Religious Freedom” in 1990 as part of a
campaign to amend the American Indian
Religious Freedom Act.
U.C.L.A. anthropologist and film advisor Peter
Nabokov’s piece, “Sacred Places of Native
America,” expands directly on our film, In the
Light of Reverence, puts our three stories in a wider
context, and goes more deeply into the three
places and cultures profiled in the film.
“Wintu Sacred Geography” was written by
Dorothea Theodoratus, an anthropologist and a
film advisor, and Frank LaPena, a renowned
Wintu artist, to support efforts to protect places
of spiritual significance.
The Hopi perspective is explored in “Managing
Hopi Sacred Sites to Protect Religious Freedom” by
Hopi Cultural Preservation Officer Leigh
introduction
• 15 •
SACRED L ANDS AND
RELIGIOUS FREED OM
~ by Vine Deloria Jr.
Holy Men have gone into the high places,
lakes, and isolated sanctuaries to pray,
receive guidance from the Spirits, and train
younger people in the ceremonies that constitute
the spiritual life of the tribal community. In these
ceremonies, medicine men represented the whole
web of cosmic life in the continuing search for
balance and harmony. Through various rituals in
which birds, animals, and plants were
participants, harmony of life was achieved and
maintained.
After the tribes were forcibly removed from
their aboriginal homelands and forced to live on
restricted smaller reservations, the Bureau of
Indian Affairs prohibited many ceremonies and
the people were forced to adopt various subterfuges so that ceremonial life could continue.
Some tribes conducted their most important
ceremonies on national holidays and Christian
feast days, explaining to curious whites that they
were simply honoring George Washington or
celebrating Christmas and Easter. Since many
shrines and holy places were isolated and rural
parts of the continent were not being exploited or
settled, it was easy for small parties of people to
go into the mountains or to remote lakes and
buttes to conduct ceremonies without interference
from non-Indians. Most Indians did not see any
conflict between their old beliefs and the new
religions of the white man, and, consequently, a
surprising number of people participated in the
ancient rituals while maintaining membership in
a Christian denomination.
During the last century, the expanding
national population and the introduction of
c h r i s to p h e r m c l e o d
S
INCE TIME IMMEMORIAL , Indian tribal
Lakota scholar Vine Deloria Jr., speaking after a screening
of In the Light of Reverence at the Department of the
Interior in Washington in March 2002. He asked,
“How are we going to present the sacred to people who
have no idea what is sacred?”
w i l l pa r r i n e l lo
SACRED LAND READER
• 16 •
corporate farming and
practice their religion and
more extensive mining
conduct ceremonies at
and timber industry
sacred sites on public
activities reduced the
lands. Some courts even
isolation of rural
hinted darkly that any
America. Pressures to
recognition of the tribal
develop public and
practices would be
reservation lands made it
tantamount to estabincreasingly difficult for
lishing a state religion, an
traditional native people
interpretation which
to conduct their religious
upon analysis was a
ceremonies and rituals.
dreadful misreading of
Joe Chasing Horse (Lakota) in the Black Hills
Since many sacred sites
American history and the
were on public lands, religious leaders often were
Constitution and may have been an effort to
able to work out informal arrangements with
inflame anti-Indian feelings.
federal agencies to allow them access to these
places for religious purposes. But as personnel
changed in state and federal agencies, a new
Supreme Court rules: No
generation of bureaucrats, fearful of setting
constitutional protection
precedents, began to restrict Indian access to
IN 1988, THE SUPREME COURT heard Lyng v.
sacred sites by narrowing the rules and
Northwest Indian Cemetery Protective Association, a
regulations for managing public lands.
case that involved access to sacred sites high up in
In an effort to clarify the status of traditional
the Chimney Rock area of the Six Rivers National
religious practices and practitioners, Congress in
Forest in Northern California. The Forest Service
1978 passed The American Indian Religious
proposed to build a six-mile paved logging road
Freedom Act, a joint resolution that declared it
that would have opened the high country to
the policy of Congress to protect and preserve
commercial logging, destroying the isolation of
American Indians’ inherent right to believe,
the ceremonial sites of three tribes and
express, and practice their traditional religions.
introducing new processes of environmental
The resolution identified the problem as one of a
degradation. The lower federal courts prohibited
“lack of knowledge or the insensitive and
construction of the road on the grounds that it
inflexible and enforcement of federal policies and
would have made religious ceremonial use of the
regulations.” Section 2 of the resolution directed
area impossible. Before the Supreme Court could
the President to have various federal departments
hear the appeal, Congress passed the California
evaluate their policies and procedures and report
Wilderness Act, thereby making the question
back to Congress the results of this investigation
almost moot (because much of the high country
and any recommendations for legislative action.
was protected as wilderness and the logging road
Most people assumed that the resolution
threat was eliminated). The Supreme Court,
clarified federal attitudes toward traditional
nevertheless, insisted on deciding the religious
religions, and it began to be cited in litigation
issues and ruled that even the Free Exercise clause
involving the construction of dams, roads, and
did not prevent the government from using its
the management of federal lands. Almost
property any way it saw fit.
unanimously, however, the federal courts ruled
Most troubling about the Supreme Court’s
that the resolution contained nothing that
decision was its insistence on analyzing tribal
protected or preserved the right of Indians to
• 17 •
RELIGIOUS FREEDOM
religions within the same conceptual framework
these views can only be reconciled by examining
as Western organized religions. Justice O’Connor
them in a much broader historical and
observed, “A broad range of government activities
geographical context.
—from social welfare programs to foreign aid to
Justice Brennan attempted to make this differconservation projects—will always be considered
ence clear when he observed that, “Although few
essential to the spiritual well-being of some
tribal members actually made medicine at the
citizens, often on the basis of sincerely held
most powerful sites, the entire tribe’s welfare
religious beliefs. Others will find the very same
hinges on the success of individual practitioners.”
activity deeply offensive, and perhaps
More than that, however, the “World Renewal”
incompatible with their own search for spiritual
ceremonies conducted by the tribes were done on
fulfillment and with the tenets of their religion.”
behalf of the earth and all forms of life. To
Thus, ceremonies and rituals performed for
characterize the ceremonies as if they were a
thousands of years were treated as if they were
matter of personal, emotional or even communal
personal fads or matters of modern, emotional,
aesthetic preferences, as was done by Justice
personal preference
O’Connor, is to miss
based upon the
the point entirely. In
• • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • •
erroneous assumption
effect, the court
that belief and behavior
declares that Indians
“The struggle by American Indians
can be separated. Justice
cannot pray for the
to protect their sacred sites and
Brennan dissented and
planet or for other
to have access to them for
vigorously attacked this
people and other forms
traditional
ceremonies
is
a
line of reasoning but
of life in the manner
movement
in
which
all
peoples
failed to gather support
required by their
within the court. Most
religions.
should become involved.”
observers of the Supreme
Two contradictory
— VINE DELORIA JR.
Court were simply
responses seem to
• • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • •
confounded at the
describe the non-Indian
majority’s conclusion,
attitudes toward
which suggested that destroying a religion did not
traditional tribal religions: Some people want the
unduly burden the religion and that no
medicine men and women to share their religious
constitutional protections were available to the
beliefs in the same manner as priests, rabbis, and
Indians.
ministers, who publicly expound the tenets of
When informed of the meaning of this
their denominations; others feel that Indian
decision, most people show great sympathy for
ceremonials are remnants of primitive life and
traditionally religious people. At the same time,
should be abandoned. Neither perspective
those people find it difficult to understand why it
understands that Indian tribes are communities in
is so important that ceremonies be held, that they
fundamental ways that other American
be conducted only at certain locations, and that
communities and organizations are not. Tribal
they be held under conditions of extreme secrecy
communities are wholly defined by family
and privacy. These problems in understanding
relationships, whereas non-Indian communities
highlight the great gulf that exists between
are defined primarily by residence or by agreement
traditional Western thinking about religion and
with sets of intellectual beliefs. Ceremonial and
the Indian perspective. It is the difference between ritual knowledge is possessed by everyone in the
individual conscience and commitment
Indian community, although only a few people
(Western) and communal tradition (Indian), and
may actually be chosen to perform these acts.
Defining
sacredness
IN A NON-INDIAN context,
an individual or group of
non-Indians may come to
believe in the sacredness of
lands based on their experiences or on intensive study of
preselected evidence. But this
belief becomes the subject of
intense criticism and does
not, except under unusual
circumstances, become an
operative principle in the life
and behavior of the nonIndian group. The same belief,
when seen in an Indian context, is an integral part of the
experiences of the people—
past, present, and future. The idea does not
become a bone of contention among the people,
for even if someone does not have experience or
belief in the sacredness of lands, he or she accords
tradition the respect that it deserves. Indians who
have never visited certain sacred sites nevertheless
know of these places from the general community
knowledge, and they feel them to be an essential
part of their being.
Justice Brennan, in countering the neardemagogic statement by Justice O’Connor, that
recognition of the sacredness of certain sites
would allow traditional Indian religions to define
the use of all public lands, suggested that the burden of proof be placed on traditional people to
demonstrate why some sites are central to their
practice and other sites, while invoking a sense of
reverence, are not as important. This requirement
is not unreasonable, but it requires a willingness
on the part of non-Indians
and the courts to entertain
different ideas which, until
the present, have not been
part of their experience or
understanding. The subject is
considerably more complex
than most people expect.
If we were to subject the
topic of the sacredness of
lands to a Western rational
analysis, fully recognizing
that such an analysis is
merely for our convenience
in discussion and does not
represent the nature of
reality, we would probably
find four major categories to
describe sacredness. Some
categories certainly overlap in
the sense that different
“Tradition tells us that there
individuals and groups have
are, on this earth, some places
already sorted out their own
of inherent sacredness, sites that
beliefs so that they would
are Holy in and of themselves.”
reject the classification of
— VINE DELORIA JR.
certain sites in the categories
c h r i s to p h e r m c l e o d
SACRED LAND READER
• 18 •
Authorization to perform ceremonies comes from
higher spiritual powers and not by certification
from an institution or formal organization.
The Indian community passes knowledge along
over the generations as a common heritage that is
enriched by the experiences of both individuals
and groups of people in the ceremonies. Both the
ceremony and the people’s interpretation of it
change as new insights are gained. By contrast, the
non-Indian communities establish educational
institutions which examine, clarify and sometimes
radically change knowledge to fit their needs.
Knowledge is the possession of an exclusive group
of people—the scholars and the professionals who
deeply believe that the rank and file of their
communities are not intelligent enough to
understand the esoteric truths of their society.
Basic truths about the world are not expected to
change, regardless of the experiences of any
generation, and “leading
authorities” are granted
infallibility based on their
professional status alone.
• 19 •
RELIGIOUS FREEDOM
in which Indians would place them. Nevertheless,
A second classification of sacred lands has a
it is the principle of respect for the sacred that is
deeper, more profound sense of the sacred. It can
important.
be illustrated in Old Testament stories that have
The first and most familiar sacred lands are
become the foundation of two world religions.
those places to which we attribute a sacredness
After the death of Moses, Joshua led the Hebrews
because the location is a site where, within our
across the River Jordan into the Holy Land. On
own history, regardless of our group, something of approaching the river with the Ark of the
great importance took place. Unfortunately, many
Covenant, the waters of the Jordan “rose up” or
of these places are related to instances of human
parted, and the people, led by the Ark, crossed
violence; Gettysburg
over on “dry ground,”
National Cemetery is a
which is to say they
• • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • •
good example of this
crossed without diffi“For
most
Americans,
the
Holy
Land
kind of sacred land.
culty. After crossing,
exists
on
another
continent,
Abraham Lincoln
Joshua selected one man
properly noted that we
from each of the 12
but for Native Americans,
cannot hallow the
tribes and told him to
the Holy Land is here.”
battlefield at Gettysburg
find a large stone. The
— NARRATOR FROM IN THE LIGHT OF
because others, the men
12 stones were then
REVERENCE
who fought there, had
placed together in a
• • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • •
already consecrated it by
monument to mark the
giving “that last full
spot where the people
measure of devotion.” We generally hold these
had camped after having crossed the river successplaces sacred because there men did what we
fully. When asked about this strange behavior,
might one day be required to do—give our lives in
Joshua replied, “That this may be a sign among
a cause we hold dear. Wounded Knee, South
you, that when your children ask their fathers in
Dakota, is such a place for many Indians. The
time to come, saying, ‘What mean ye by these
Lincoln Memorial in Washington, D.C., might be
stones?’ Then you shall answer them: That the
an example of a location with a nonviolent
waters of Jordan were cut off before the Ark of the
background.
Covenant of the Lord; when it passed over Jordan”
Every society needs these kinds of sacred
(Joshua 4:6-7).
places. They help to instill a sense of social
In comparing this sacred site with Gettysburg,
cohesion in the people and remind them of the
we must understand a fundamental difference.
passage of the generations that have brought them Gettysburg is made sacred by the actions of men.
to the present. A society that cannot remember its
It can be described as exquisitely dear to us, but it
past and does not honor it is in peril of losing its
is not a location where something specifically
soul. Indians, because of our considerably longer
religious has happened. In the crossing of the
tenure on this continent, have many more of
River Jordan, the sacred appeared in the lives of
these kinds of sacred places than do non-Indians.
human beings; the sacred appeared in an otherMany different kinds of ceremonies can and have
wise secular situation. No matter how we might
been held at these locations, and there is both
attempt to explain this event in later historical,
exclusivity and inclusiveness depending upon the
political, or economic terms, the essence of the
occasion and the ceremony. In this classification,
event is that the sacred has become a part of our
the site is all-important, but it is sanctified each
experience.
time ceremonies are held and prayers offered
Some of the sites that traditional religious
there.
leaders visit are of a similar nature. Thus Buffalo
SACRED LAND READER
• 20 •
Gap in the southeastern
ceremonies in particular
• • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • •
edge of the Black Hills of
that the Supreme
South Dakota marks the
Court’s rulings now
“Ancient wisdom speaks directly
location where the
prohibit.
to
pressing
modern
concerns.
In
sacred
buffalo emerged each
It is unlikely that
sites
lies
a
vision
of
our
future
and
the
spring to begin the
non-Indians have had
ceremonial year of the
these kinds of experiplanet on which we live.”
Plains Indians. It may
ences, particularly since
— VINE DELORIA JR.
indeed be the starting
most churches and
• • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • •
point of the Great Race,
synagogues have special
which determined the
rituals which are
primacy between the two-leggeds and four-leggeds
designed to denaturalize the buildings so that
at the beginning of this world. Several mountains
their services can be held there. Non-Indians have
in New Mexico and Arizona mark places where
simply not been on this continent very long; their
the Pueblo, Hopi, and Navajo peoples completed
families have moved about constantly, so they
their migrations and were told to settle, or where
have forfeited any kind of relationship that might
they first established their spiritual relationships
have been possible. Additionally, non-Indians
with bear, deer, eagle, and the other forms of life
have engaged in senseless killings of wildlife and
who participate in the ceremonials. As we extend
utter destruction of plant life, and it is unlikely
the circle geographically, we must include the
that they would have understood any effort by
Apache, Ute, Comanche, Kiowa and other tribes.
other forms of life to communicate. But it is also
East of the Mississippi, even though many places
a fact of human experience that some nonhave been nearly obliterated, people still have
Indians, who have lived in relative isolation in
knowledge of these sacred sites.
rural areas and whose families have lived
In the religious world of most tribes, birds,
continuously in certain locations, tell stories
animals, and plants compose the “other peoples”
about birds and animals not unlike the traditions
of creation and, depending on the ceremony,
of many tribes.
various of these peoples participate in human
The third kind of sacred lands are places of
activities. If Jews and Christians see the action of
overwhelming holiness where higher powers, on
a single deity at sacred places and in churches and
their own initiative, have revealed themselves to
synagogues, traditional Indian people see
human beings. Again we can use an Old
considerably more activity as the whole of
Testament narrative to illustrate this kind of
creation becomes an active participant in
location. Prior to his trip to Egypt, Moses herded
ceremonial life. Since the relationship with the
his father-in-law’s sheep on and near Mount
“other peoples” is so fundamental to the human
Horeb. One day he took the flock to the far side of
community, most traditional practitioners are
the mountain, and to his amazement he saw a
very reluctant to articulate the specific elements of bush burning with fire but not being consumed.
either the ceremony or the location. And since
Approaching this spot with the usual curiosity of
some ceremonies involve the continued good
a person accustomed to the outdoor life, Moses
health and prosperity of the “other peoples,”
was startled when the Lord spoke to him from the
discussing the nature of the ceremony would
bush, warning, “Draw not hither; put off thy
violate the integrity of these relationships. Thus,
shoes from thy feet, for the place whereupon thou
when traditional people explain that these
standest is holy ground” (Exodus 3:5, emphasis
ceremonies are being held for “all our relatives,”
added).
that explanation should be sufficient. It is these
This tradition tells us that there are, on this
c h r i s to p h e r m c l e o d
these holy places with no ill effects. They have
thereupon come to believe that they have
demonstrated the false nature of Indian beliefs.
These violations reveal a strange non-Indian belief
in a form of mechanical magic that is touchingly
adolescent, a belief that an impious act can trigger
an immediate response from the higher spiritual
powers. Surely these impious acts suggest the
concept of a deity who spends time recording
minor transgressions, as some Protestant sects
have envisioned God. It would be impossible for
the thoughtless acts of one species to have a
drastic effect on the earth. The cumulative effect of
continuous secularity, however, poses an entirely
different kind of danger, and prophecies tell us of
the impious people who would come here, defy
Bear Butte, South Dakota
the Creator, and bring about the massive destruction of the planet. Many traditional people believe
that we are now quite near that time.
Of all the traditional ceremonies extant and
actively practiced at the time of contact with nonIndians, ceremonies derived from or related to
these holy places have the highest retention rate
because of their planetary importance. Ironically,
traditional people have been forced to hold these
ceremonies under various forms of subterfuge and
have been abused and imprisoned for doing them.
Yet the ceremonies have very little to do with
individual or tribal prosperity. Their underlying
theme is one of gratitude expressed by human
• 21 •
RELIGIOUS FREEDOM
earth, some places of inherent sacredness, sites
that are holy in and of themselves. Human
societies come and go on this earth, and any
prolonged occupation of a geographical region
will produce shrines and sacred sites discerned by
the occupying people. One need only to look at
the shrines of present-day Europe and read the
archaeology of the sites to understand that long
before Catholic or Protestant churches were built
in certain places, many other religions had
established their shrines and temples on those
spots. These holy places are locations where
human beings have always gone to communicate
and be with higher spiritual powers. This
phenomenon is worldwide and all religions find
that these places regenerate people and fill them
with spiritual powers. In
the Western Hemisphere
these places, with some
few exceptions, are
known only by American
Indians. Bear Butte, Blue
Lake and the High Places
of the Lyng case are all
well-known locations
which are sacred in and
of themselves.
Among the duties
that must be performed
at these holy places are
ceremonies that the
people have been commanded to perform in order
that the earth itself and all its forms of life might
survive. Some evidence of this sacred dimension,
and of other sacred places, came through in the
testimony of traditional people at various times in
the 20th century when they explained to nonIndians, in and out of court, that they must perform certain kinds of ceremonies, at certain times
and places, in order that the sun may continue to
shine, the earth prosper, and the stars remain in
the heavens.
Skeptical non-Indians and representatives of
other religions seeking to discredit tribal religions
have sometimes deliberately violated some of
SACRED LAND READER
c h r i s to p h e r m c l e o d
• 22 •
“It’s not that Indians should have exclusive rights there, it’s that
that location is sacred enough so that it should have time of its own, and once
it has time of its own then the people who know how to do ceremonies should
come and minister to it. That’s so hard to get across to people.”
—
VINE DELORIA JR. FROM IN THE LIGHT OF REVERENCE
beings on behalf of all forms of life, and they
complete the largest possible cycle of life,
ultimately representing the cosmos in its specific
realizations, becoming thankfully aware of itself.
Having used Old Testament examples to show
the objective presense of the holy, we can draw
additional conclusions about the nature of these
holy places from the story of the Exodus. Moses
did not make that particular location of the
burning bush an object of worship for his people,
although there was every reason to suppose that
he could have done so. Rather he obeyed and
acted on the revelation he received there. In the
absence of further information, we must conclude
that this location was so holy that he could not
reveal its secret to other people. If he had been
told to perform ceremonies at that location
during specific days or times of the year, world
history would have been entirely different. In that
case, the particular message received at these
locations becomes a definitive divine command
which people must then follow. We have many
tribal migration stories that involve this particular
kind of divine command, and sacred sites that
originate in the same revelation. For traditional
Indian religious leaders who have been told to
perform ceremonies as spiritual guardians of this
continent, there is no question of obedience.
The second and third categories of sacred lands
result from revelations of the Holy at certain
locations. The ceremonies that belong to these
sacred sites involve a process of continuous
revelation and provide the people with the information they need to maintain a balance in their
relationships with the earth and other forms of
life. Because there are higher spiritual powers who
are in communication with human beings, there
has to be a fourth category of sacred lands.
Human beings must always be ready to receive
new revelations at new locations. If this possibility
did not exist, all deities and spirits would be dead.
Consequently, we always look forward to the
revelation of new sacred places and new ceremonies. Unfortunately, some federal courts have
irrationally and arbitrarily circumscribed this
universal aspect of religion by insisting that
traditional religious practitioners restrict their
identification of sacred locations to those places
Sacred sites that higher powers have chosen for
manifestation enable us to focus our concerns on
the specific form of our lives. These places remind
us of our unique relationship with spiritual forces
and call us to fulfill our religious vocations. These
kinds of experiences have shown us something of
the nature of the universe by an affirmative
manifestation of themselves, and this knowledge
illuminates everything else that we know.
Protecting sacred sites:
National benefits
C h r i s to p h e r M c L e o d
THE STRUGGLE by American Indians to protect
their sacred sites and to have access to them for
traditional ceremonies is a movement in which all
peoples should become involved. The federal
agencies charged with managing public lands,
which argue that to give recognition to any form
of traditional tribal religion is to establish that
religion, have raised a false issue. No other
religion in this country speaks to the issue of the
human relationship with the rest of the universe
in this manner. The alternative use of land
proposed by the Forest Service, the Bureau of Land
Management, and the National Park Service
allows the rapid exploitation of natural resources
by a few favored private clients—a wholly secular
and destructive use of the lands.
• 23 •
RELIGIOUS FREEDOM
that were historically visited by Indians, implying
that, at least for the federal courts, God is dead.
In denying the possibility of the continuing
revelation of the sacred in our lives, federal
courts, scholars and state and federal agencies
refuse to accord credibility to the testimony of
religious leaders, demand evidence that a
ceremony or location has always been central to
the belief and practices of the tribe, and impose
exceedingly rigorous standards on Indians who
appear before them. This practice does exactly
what the Supreme Court avows is not to be done—
it allows the courts to rule on the substance of
religious belief and practice. In other words,
courts will protect a religion if it shows every
symptom of being dead but will severely restrict it
if it appears to be alive.
Today a major crisis exists in Indian country
because of the Lyng decision. As the dissent noted,
there is no real protection for the practice of
traditional religions within the framework of
American constitutional or statutory law. Courts
usually dismiss Indian petitions automatically
without evidentiary hearings and at the same time
insist that traditional people identify the “central
belief” of the tribal religion. Presumably this
demand is benign and made with the hope that by
showing centrality for the site or ceremony, courts
will be able to uphold some form of constitutional
protection on some future occasion.
As human beings, we live in time and space
and receive most of our signals about proper
behavior primarily from each other. Under these
circumstances, both the individual and the group
must have some kind of sanctity if we are to have
a social order at all. By recognizing the sacredness
of lands in the many aspects we have described,
we place ourselves in a realistic context in which
individuals and groups can cultivate and enhance
the experience of the sacred. Recognizing the
sacredness of lands on which previous genertions
have lived and died is the foundation of all other
sentiments. Instead of denying this aspect of our
lives, we should be setting aside additional places
which have transcendent meaning.
Threatened sites
IN 2003, EXAMPLES OF threatened sacred sites
are Zuni Salt Lake in New Mexico, Indian Pass
and Medicine Lake in California, Weatherman
Draw in Montana, and Yucca Mountain in
Nevada. There are many others.
The Department of Interior has issued a permit
for the Salt River Project, an Arizona utility, to
open an 18,000-acre coal stripmine within a
sanctuary used by the Zuni and other tribes on
pilgrimages for salt. The mine threatens to dry up
Zuni Salt Lake, home of the Salt Mother deity,
who lives in the aquifers beneath the lake, and
through the flow of water provides salt to the
people for protection and sustenance.
The Quechan people of Southern California are
fighting a proposed open-pit gold mine amidst a
network of trails used for spiritual practices for
10,000 years. After six years of hearings and
studies, the Department of the Interior protected
Indian Pass during the Clinton administration,
but the Bush administration reversed that decision
and re-opened the permit process for a massive
cyanide heap-leach gold mine.
c h r i s to p h e r m c l e o d
SACRED LAND READER
• 24 •
The truly ironic aspect of modern land use is
that during the last three decades, Congress has
passed many laws which purport to protect
certain kinds of lands and resources from the very
developers who now seek to exclude Indian
religious people from using public lands. The Wild
and Scenic Rivers Act, the Wilderness Act, the
National Environmental Protection Act, the Clean
Air Act, the National Historic Preservation Act,
and several other statutes all take definite steps to
protect and preserve the environment in a
manner more reminiscent of traditional Native
American religions than that of uncontrolled
capitalism or the domination of land expounded
by the world religions. No real progress can be
made in environmental law unless some of the
insights into the sacredness of land derived from
traditional tribal religions become basic attitudes
of the larger society.
At present, legal remedies for Indian religious
practitioners are limited to procedures provided by
various environmental and historic preservation
laws that may, in some circumstances, indirectly
protect sites. The only existing law directly
addressing this issue, the American Indian
Religious Freedom Act of 1978, is simply a policy
statement with “no teeth.” It has led to some
administrative regulations and policies that give
limited additional opportunities for input, but it
provides no legal cause of action to aggrieved
practitioners.
Harvesting salt at Zuni Salt Lake
At Medicine Lake, near Mount Shasta,
geothermal energy may soon be tapped in a vision
questing area of great importance to the Pit River
Tribe. Bush administration officials in the BLM
and Forest Service in November 2002 reversed
minimal protections provided just two years
earlier, and approved a geothermal power plant
within one mile of the lake. Calpine Corp. is
drilling exploratory wells and an industrial
labyrinth of roads and transmission towers is
being planned for this remote mountainous area.
Weatherman Draw, a valley that contains one
of the highest concentrations of rock art in the
country, is threatened by oil drilling. In early
will provide a legal cause of action when
government or corporate actions are likely to
affect sacred places. New legislation should
provide for more extensive notice to and consultation with tribes and affected parties in such
circumstances, and for strict confidentiality with
regard to details about sacred lands.
New legislation would ensure that the principle of religious freedom, rightfully urged upon
the rest of the world by the United States, truly
incorporates and applies to the unique needs of
Indian religions.
VINE DELORIA JR . is a member of the Standing
Rock Sioux Tribe. A noted author, theologian,
historian, and attorney, he is uniquely qualified to
address Native American religious freedom and sacred
land issues. He is author of Custer Died for Your
Sins, God Is Red, For This Land and many other
books.
• 25 •
RELIGIOUS FREEDOM
2002, the National Trust for Historic Preservation
bought some time by purchasing the current
leases from the Anschutz Oil Company, but the
Bureau of Land Management can still proceed
with leasing in the future.
By the 1863 Treaty of Ruby Valley, Yucca
Mountain is under the jurisdiction of Shoshone
and Paiute peoples. In 1977, the Indian Claims
Commission offered the Western Shoshone $26
million for their treaty lands. The Shoshone
refused, maintaining that their religion prevented
them from selling the land. In July 2002, a bill
approving the burial of 77,000 tons of high-level
radioactive waste in Yucca Mountain passed the
Senate by a 60-39 vote, overriding a veto by the
state of Nevada, and President Bush signed his
approval.
As a result of these ongoing threats, the Sacred
Lands Protection Coalition—including the
Association on American Indian Affairs, Seventh
Generation Fund, the National Congress of
American Indians, as well as tribes and other
Indian organizations—is seeking legislation that
a pr i m e r to acco m pa n y t h e f i l m in the light of reverence
SACRED PL ACES OF
NATIVE A MERICA
~ by Peter Nabokov
“Every society needs these kinds of sacred places. They help to instill a sense
of social cohesion in the people and remind them of the passage of the
generations that have brought them to the present. A society that cannot
remember its past and honor it is in peril of losing its soul.”
— VINE DELORIA JR.
Europe Meets a New Holy L and
N JULY 7, 1540 , some of the earliest
European soldiers to invade North
America stumbled upon the powers of an
American Indian sacred place. That evening a
train of Spanish horsemen and wagons led by
Francisco Vasquez de Coronado approached the
adobe houses of Hawikuh, a Zuni Indian village
which was located just east of the present-day
New Mexico-Arizona state border.
According to Zuni Indian memory, these
bearded “men in metal” had shown up just as the
tribe was celebrating its summer solstice
ceremonies. During this four-day affair, a single
file line of about 60 pilgrims and elders leave their
pueblos and embark on the “barefoot trail.”
Also known as the “pathway to heaven”—
O
ko:thluwala:wa—the path leads 55 miles west to a
place where the Zuni River flows between two
mountains before it reaches the Little Colorado.
The Zuni believe that this is where their spirits
travel after death, ending up where a special
spring feeds a sacred, underground lake. At this
lake the departed are said to dance with the
spirits, who are known as Kokko. Not far away is
the mountain where the holy Zuni clowns, the
Koyemshi, were first created. Some Zunis have
described the route from their homes to this holy
terrain as “a spiritual lifeline.”
The entire atmosphere during the pilgrimage is
one of great solemnity; the Indians make
offerings, pray and gather natural pigments in an
attempt to bring peace and order to the whole
s a l ly co l e
But Coronado didn’t understand
or didn’t care about the Indian
ceremonies. So a bloody fight
ensued—the first major warfare
between Indians and Europeans in
North America.
Today, the Zuni people continue
to undertake those foot pilgrimages
to their sacred lake.
For a great many of the 300 or
so distinctive Indian cultures in
aboriginal North America—not to
mention for the native societies of
Central and South America as well—
spiritual ties such as these to their
natural environments were
absolutely essential to native identities, religious
concepts and notions of basic truth. And for
many contemporary Indians, they still are.
world, to unite the generations over time, to
commemorate their origins, and to maintain
proper relations between human beings and the
universe. This was the religious process which the
Spanish were interrupting in 1540, and the sacred
landscape they were violating.
During their trek the Zuni insist that no one
may cross the pilgrims’ path, which has been
consecrated with cornmeal. And so it is said that
priests of their Bow Society yelled at the Spaniards
not to endanger the pilgrims, warning them
“don’t cross the trail.” When the foreigners did
not halt, the Zuni tried to frighten them away.
The following day, as Coronado’s command came
upon Hawikuh village, they spotted people on the
rooftops making smoke signals, probably part of
the same solstice ritual which involved sending
rain-making symbols ahead to the little “fire
god”—Shu’la:witsi—whose masked impersonator
was accompanying the pilgrims to the sacred lake,
the doorway to “Zuni Heaven.”
When Coronado’s men tried to press forward,
Indian priests sprinkled yet another protective line
of cornmeal at the entrance to the village, in
effect alerting them again, “Do not enter, now,
because we’re having a ceremony that you should
not disrupt.” Almost certainly their anxiety was
due to concern for the safe and auspicious
re-entry of their pilgrims back home.
What Are Land-Based Religions?
ACROSS NORTH AMERICA , a wide range of
religious beliefs and practices directed tribes of
people toward proper relationships with their
encompassing cosmos and immediate
surroundings, including its winged and fourlegged inhabitants, its rocks, trees and waters.
Special ceremonies assured the seasonal bounties
of wild foods and agricultural produce. Individual
and group ceremonies tied Indians to the spirits
that they believed inhabited their immediate skies,
trees, groves, mountains, volcanic fields, caves,
lakes, rivers, waterfalls and springs.
Risky as it is to make generalizations about all
North American Indians, it is safe to say that the
great majority of tribes also designated certain
locales as supernaturally potent and especially
beneficial—as “sacred.” The historian of religions
Mircea Eliade coined the awkward term
hierophany to explain what happens at such
special places. At these places “the sacred manifests itself.” In these locations, the supernatural
realm with all its powers—positive and negative—
• 29 •
SACRED PLACES
asserts itself into the ordinary world.
entire territories whose political integrity is
For Indian societies these were time-honored,
reinforced by creation or migration narratives that
proven spots for human beings to seek out and
describe them as “holy lands.”
transact with the unseen beings and forces that
But Indians also treasured other portions of
inhabit the universe. At such locations aspiring
the natural environment for more down-to-earth
shamans, leaders, warriors, lovers, hunters and
reasons. Such locations nurtured medicinal herbs,
gamblers might acquire that special “edge” and
special roots, plants for eating, basket-making or
boost their fortunes through supernatural grace
textile arts, minerals for body paints and ground
or assistance.
“dry” paintings, and springs renowned for their
In addition, Indian creation stories and folk
healing powers. Certain meadows, underbrush or
tales are often quite specific as to their
water sources might attract animals or fish, or the
geographical settings. Studying them closely, we
twists and contours of particular river valleys
learn of sacred sites where a tribe’s original
might prove conducive to trapping, fishing or
ancestors either dekilling game, and so
scended from an aboveIndians might use and
• • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • •
world (as with the
treasure those same sites
Iroquois of the Northyear after year. Gener“We consider archaeological sites to
east), or emerged out of
ally, tribes also took
be shrines and living entities. This is
an underworld (as with
special care to either
where our ancestral people lived,
the Pueblos of the Southmemorialize (or studiand
when
they
left
they
laid
these
west). We hear of places
ously avoid) those places
villages
to
rest.
When
you
disturb
an
that are still revered for
where blood had been
being the climax of
shed in intertribal wararchaeological site, in our Hopi view,
lengthy migrations (by
fare. And for many
you disturb a living entity. They are
whole ethnic groups or
Indians, the interment
meant to be silent—they hold the
by separate clans who
of their dead lent a
spirits
of
our
ancestral
people,
later merged, as with
poignant sanctity to
and the sites themselves have
the Hopi of Arizona) to
cemetery plots, effigy
a “promised land” (as
mounds or burial caves.
life and spirit.”
with the Crow of
— L E I G H K U WA N W I S I W M A ,
Montana or the Choctaw
H O P I C U LT U R A L P R E S E R VA T I O N O F F I C E
of Mississippi).
ONE SCHOL AR who
• • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • •
Through such oral
has devoted much of his
traditions we also
career to studying the
discover how the formation of some landscapes
wide range of Indian sacred sites is Colorado
was attributed to the dramatic actions of
anthropologist Deward E. Walker Jr. Over the
mythological beings during a long-ago Age of
years, Walker has come up with the following
Transformation—such as the work of the Trickster
useful checklist of “major types” of such
figure, Coyote, who fashioned many of the
culturally sensitive Indian places that comprise
outcrops, hills and riverfronts of Oregon and
“sacred geography”:
Idaho’s landscape, as described in stories told by
the Nez Perce and neighboring tribes. For other
1. Vision quest sites.
native nations, such as the Hopi, the Hidatsa of
2. Monumental geological features that possess
North Dakota or the Yaqui of Sonora, there
extraordinary (and usually mythic) signifiremain boundary shrines, which circumscribe
cance, such as mountains, waterfalls or
bravest men and women dared make contact.
3.
The Lakota author Vine Deloria Jr. has written
extensively about the central importance of sacred
4.
places in American Indian consciousness.
5.
Attempting to communicate their diversity to
non-Indian readers, he has proposed four main
6.
categories of sacred lands, and sometimes uses
7.
non-Indian examples to help illustrate them. His
first category includes places where something
8.
significant took place. Here he is referring to spots
of historical importance that have been created by
9.
human action, such as the Gettysburg Battlefield
for non-Indians, or the Wounded Knee massacre
site in South Dakota for Indians.
Deloria’s second grouping includes places that
To this list one might add shrines, sites of
have been created by the actions of mysterious,
puberty initiation rituals, “homes” of rain or
sacred forces or supernatural beings. Recorded in
bounty-bringing spirits, and “opening” places to
myths and legends, these actions have lent signithe supernatural world.
ficance to thousands of
Whether with a band of
often-forgotten Indian places
fellow tribesfolk or utterly
across North America. As
alone, Indians often left
examples, he cites places such
offerings of food, tobacco or
as “Buffalo Gap in the southother gifts at such places.
eastern edge of the Black
Plains Indians and other
Hills of South Dakota, which
tribes offered painful sacrimarks the location where the
fices there, suffering thirst
buffalo emerged each spring
and hunger as they pleaded
to begin the ceremonial year
for blessings and power.
of the Plains Indian…. Several
VINE DELORIA JR ., L AKOTA SCHOL AR
During key moments in some
mountains in New Mexico
ritual calendars (such as the
and Arizona mark places
“The attitude of our species is
Zuni solstice ceremony
where the Pueblo, Hopi, and
that this whole thing was created
described above), Indians
Navajo peoples completed
for us. It has no value except how
uttered prayers, sang songs or
their migrations, were told to
we use it. The basic problem is
undertook collective pilgrimsettle, or where they first
that American society is a ‘rights
ages to these locations. Yet
established their spiritual
society’ not a ‘responsibilities
the powers of these places
relationships with bear, deer,
society.’ What you’ve got is each
could also prompt the oppoeagle and other forms of life
individual saying, ‘Well, I have
site behavior. For Indians
who participate in the
a right to do this.’ Having
might take pains to detour
ceremonials.”
religious
places,
revolving
your
around some spots because
Deloria’s third category
religion
around
that,
means
you
they were the well-known
covers locations where the
are
always
in
contact
with
the
homes of especially dangerdivine revealed itself to
earth, you’re responsible for it
ous or unpredictable spirithuman beings. His nonand to it.”
beings with whom only the
Indian example of these
w i l l pa r r i n e l lo
SACRED LAND READER
• 30 •
unusual natural formations.
Rock art sites, such as pictographs or
petroglyphs.
Burial areas and cemeteries.
Sites of ceremonial structures, such as
medicine wheels or sun dance arbors.
Sweat bath sites.
Gathering areas where medicinal plants,
stones and natural materials are available.
Sites of historical significance, such as
battlefields.
The points where a group is described in
creation stories to have originated, or
routes they hallowed in myth.
IT IS IMPOSSIBLE to find an American Indian
nation without some claims to being rooted in its
particular landscape in some supernatural or
extraordinary fashion. While varying from tribe to
tribe in historical background or religious rationale, this preoccupation with being anchored to a
particular North American regional landscape is
usually a foundation of Indian identity.
The Long Siege Against Indian
Religions
WITH THE ARRIVAL of European Christianity in
the 16th century, the heavy hand of religious
repression descended upon native belief systems
and their environments. Christianity followed an
exclusive creed. Competing belief systems that
revered multiple spirits to be found in rocks and
the winds were condemned as pagan and evil.
The crusade against Indian sacred places began in
Latin America, as Catholics studied native religions closely to identify their ceremonial centers
and stamp them out. In defense, the Incas, Mayas
and Mexican Indian peoples adopted two strategies: syncretism and subterfuge.
First, colonized native villagers took full advantage of Catholicism’s readiness to “indigenize” its
rituals and precepts, allowing for animal dancers
to honor their Saints’ Days and even their blessed
Virgin, and permitting the old offerings of chocolate, tobacco and distilled liquors. Syncretism is
one term for this blending of pre-Christian and
Catholic rituals. But Indians also used subterfuge
to hide or camouflage their beliefs. At old sanctuaries such as limestone wells, caves of origin or
sacred groves, they fed hidden effigies and prayed
to their old deities of rainfall, mountains and
corn.
When Protestant settlers began moving into
New England’s Indian territories, they proved
even less tolerant of native ways. Christian clerics
and the Algonquian Indian shamans known as
powwows struggled against each other over allegiance to their respective belief systems. Some
17th century missionaries established special
“praying towns” to segregate Christianized
Indians from their fellow tribes people. The only
native spirits of the land to survive east of the
Ohio River were reconstituted in local legends as
Indian ghosts that lingered around graveyards, or
haunted houses, old village sites and dark road
crossings.
As pioneering Euro-Americans expanded westward into the more thinly populated Midwest and
• 31 •
SACRED PLACES
powerful places is the Old Testament story of the
burning bush on Mount Horeb, which spoke to
Moses and warned him, “Draw not hither; put off
thy shoes from thy feet, for the place whereon
thou standest is holy ground.” Sites associated
with similar supernatural revelations are highly
regarded by many Indian tribes across North
America. However, “In the Western Hemisphere,”
writes Deloria, “these places, with some few
exceptions, are known only to American Indians.
Bear Butte, Blue Lake and the High Places [in
northwestern California]…are all well-known
locations which are sacred in and of themselves….
Among the duties which must be performed at
these holy places are ceremonies which the people
have been commanded to perform in order that
the earth itself and all its forms of life might
survive.”
In Deloria’s fourth and final category of
sacred land, we are reminded that American
Indian peoples and their religions are not dead
and gone. “Human beings must always be ready
to receive new revelations at new locations,” he
continues, emphasizing that “we always look
forward to the revelation of new, sacred places
and new cereonies.” Here he reserves for Indians
the continuing right to worship in their own
ways, and for their religions and cultures to
remain creatively engaged in the world. But
Deloria acknowledges that this final category of
sacred sites yet-to-be faces its greatest challenge
under the non-Indian’s judicial system, which
“will protect a religion if it shows every symptom
of being dead but will severely restrict it if it
appears to be alive.”
L i b r a r y o f Co n g r e s s
SACRED LAND READER
• 32 •
Great Plains, the Puritans’ single-mindedness was
diluted by cultural diversity and seemingly unlimited open space. But in the l9th century, Indian
beliefs again fell under official disapproval of the
U.S. government. The Civilization Act of 1819
sought to support Indian missions and their
suppression of Indian beliefs, and in the 1880s
Indian rituals were targeted directly. In 1883, as
the scattered Western Indian reservations were
organized under a more efficient system of
operating procedures, U.S. Secretary of the
Interior Henry Teller established the Courts of
Indian Offenses.
Under Teller’s new network of Indian courts,
reinforced by native police forces, participation in
certain religious and social traditions, such as the
Sun Dance, “animal dances,” give-aways, feasting
and polygamy, made reservation Indians subject to
fines or imprisonment. As late as 1921, official
circulars transmitted by the Bureau of Indian
Affairs to its Indian reservations reminded federal
agents to actively discourage native ceremonies
and traditional dances.
Sioux woman and child, 1908.
The caption on this archival photograph reads:
“Bone Shirt’s Squaw and Papoose.”
The late-19th century was a time of accelerating threats to Western Indian sacred places, due
to 1) mining and ranching concerns, which
wound up desecrating sacred places or making
them off-limits to Indians, 2) government actions
to safeguard the wildlife and scenic wonders of
public lands, and 3) growing public sentiment to
annihilate the American Indian reservation
system altogether. Starting with Yellowstone
National Park in 1877, early environmentalists
and outdoorsmen began “protecting” land areas
that formerly were part of Indian territories—
many of them containing culturally sensitive
locations, such as sacred mountains, springs,
lakes and caves, but also places for traditional
procurement of natural resources. Meanwhile, the
broad-based campaign to “assimilate” Indians
climaxed with passage of the General Allotment
Act of l887.
Under this Act’s provisions, the treaty-decreed
Indian land bases were to be broken up into 320acre Indian family homesteads, with all surplus
acreage to be auctioned off. When the total
consequences of this devastating allotment policy
were tallied 50 years later in the l930s, Indians
had lost two-thirds of their land base. President
Theodore Roosevelt hailed “the pulverizing
engine” of allotment, during which a great many
sacred sites were removed from Indian ownership
or access.
Indians responded in various ways. Some
practiced their ceremonies in secret, and surreptitiously visited special places in the wider landscape. Sympathetic ranchers often looked the
other way when native families visited buttes or
caves on their land. Finally, with the “Indian New
Deal” of l934, some restrictions against native
religions were lifted. Across the Great Plains, Sun
Dancing came out of hiding and underwent a
rebirth, which continues today. But the government still frowned upon other practices, such as
the harvesting of eagle and hawk feathers for
ritual regalia and the use of the hallucinogenic
plant peyote for ceremonies of the Native
American Church.
• 33 •
In the pro-native climate of the l960s, issues
such as the freedom to conduct peyote rites, the
recovery of “cultural treasures,” ritual paraphernalia and skeletal remains from museums
and archaeological collections, and the rights of
access to sacred sites caused the U.S. Congress to
take notice. In 1970, President Richard Nixon
returned the Blue Lake watershed to Taos Pueblo.
Then, a series of congressional hearings led to
passage of the American Indian Religious Freedom
Act (AIRFA), which was signed into law by
President Jimmy Carter on August 11, 1978.
The ability of AIRFA to enforce Indian rights
and access to sensitive areas was quickly thrown
into question. In a quartet of cases, Indians tried
to use the Act to protect sacred sites, but they
wound up with well-publicized legal defeats at
Tellico Dam in Tennessee, Bear Butte in South
Dakota, the San Francisco Peaks in Arizona, and
the Siskiyou Mountains in California. This last
case—which pitted Yurok and Karuk Indian
traditionalists against the plans of the U.S. Forest
Service to pave a logging road through their sacred
“high country” between the towns of Gasquet and
Orleans (dubbed the “G-O Road”)—set the most
devastating precedent. Recorded officially as Lyng
v. Northwest Cemetery Protection Association, this
important case reached the U.S. Supreme Court
after two lower courts had ruled in favor of the
Indians and blocked the Forest Service road due to
religious freedom claims. In 1988, the Supreme
Court overturned those decisions and found that
even if the ruling fatally injured Indian religions,
the native people had no right to halt federal
programs on federal lands.
Legislation passed in l993 sought to strengthen
AIRFA, but the Supreme Court struck this down as
unconstitutional in 1996. Nevertheless, in dozens
of local campaigns, Indian rights groups across
the United States and Canada continue their
struggles to save the vestiges of their holy lands.
“Irrespective of this sad history of governmental
insensitivities,” writes the Mescalero Apache/
Yaqui educator, Irene S. Vernon, “the struggle for
Indian religious freedom continues, fueled by a
belief that the defense of religious liberty will
ensure the preservation of all ways of life.”
To illustrate the host of cultural contexts and
current threats to American Indian sacred places—
from rock climbers to mining to New Agers—the
film In the Light of Reverence depicts three case
studies from the Northern Plains, the Southwest
and California. As you watch and discuss the film
and learn about these three sites, do not forget
that they stand for dozens of similar sites and
controversies across the United States where
Indians are fighting to safeguard their spirits of
place.
SACRED PLACES
Each place on the map at left is sacred to more than one tribe and so each has several different names. The map on the right
indicates the Lakota, Wintu and Hopi names: Mato Tipila, Lodge of the Bear (Devils Tower), Bulyum Puyuik,
Great Mountain (Mt. Shasta), Tuuwanasave’e, The Earth Center (Black Mesa), Tsimontukwi, Jimson Weed Place
(Woodruff Butte), and Nuvatukaovi, The Place of Snow on the Very Top (San Francisco Peaks).
plains
“The reason why the Black Hills were so long unknown to the white man
was that Wakan’tanka [Great Spirit] created them as a meeting place for
the animals. The Indians had always known this and regarded the law of
Wakan’tanka concerning it. By this law they were forbidden to kill any of
the animals during their great gatherings. In the Black Hills there is a ridge
of land around which is a smooth, grassy place called the ‘race course.’
This is where the animals have the races, during their gatherings.”
—
E A G L E S H I E L D , S T A N D I N G R O C K L A K O T A , 19 11
The Fight Over “Bear’s Lod ge”
t
O ENLIVEN a Fourth of July picnic in 1895,
two Wyoming ranchers hammered wooden
stakes into the cracks of an upthrusting volcanic
core that was visible for many miles above the
Belle Fourche River in the northeast corner of the
state. Then they climbed to the flattened summit
of the 865-foot high monolith and erected an
American flag, which the wind soon tore away.
Known locally as Devils Tower, President
Theodore Roosevelt made that name official on
September 24, 1906, when he established Devils
Tower National Monument. Thereafter it proved
irresistible to local and visiting climbers alike,
who clambered up to the 200-by-400 foot
summit. In l934, a helicopter deposited some
passengers there; in l941, a parachutist won a
$50 bet by dropping there. In the 1980s, climbing
gyms proliferated, and scaling Devils Tower by
hand became so popular that by 1994 there were
6,000 applicants for permits to climb up and
rappel down the tower’s deep basaltic grooves.
For a number of Plains Indian cultures, however, these stunts seem frivolous, even sacrilegious. For centuries, tribes such as the Kiowa,
Cheyenne, Crow, Arikara and Lakota felt the site
was imbued with sacred power, and featured it in
their oral narratives. In their belief systems, its
reputation stood in marked contrast to its evilsounding Anglo-American designation. For the
Kiowa it was known as T’sou’a’e, or “Bear’s
Lodge,” which stems from a well-known story of
six brothers and a sister who escaped from a bear
by praying and climbing a ladder of arrows into
the sky where they transformed into the star
constellation known as the Pleiades. For the
Northern Cheyenne, the tower is said to be the
resting place of Sweet Medicine, the culture hero
who brought the Sacred Arrows to the Cheyenne
people.
For the Lakota, this landmark is especially
potent. “The Lakota people do not call this butte
‘Devils Tower’ as do many non-Indian people,”
• 35 •
SACRED PLACES
The first comprehensive treaty with the Sioux, signed at Fort Laramie, Wyoming, in 1851, recognized as sovereign Sioux
territory a large area including the sacred Black Hills and the important ceremonial sites at Bear Butte and Bear’s Lodge
(Devils Tower). The discovery of gold led to subsequent treaties and acts of Congress that separated the nine bands
of the Sioux from many of their sacred places.
said an elder from the Cheyenne River (Lakota)
reservation about his people’s association with the
site. “Instead we use different names. I know the
butte as ‘Mato Tipila,’ or ‘Bear Lodge.’ I know of
other Indians who call it ‘Grey Horn Butte.’ Mato
Tipila is pure. It is a sacred site without which our
people cannot preserve our traditional culture and
spirituality…. Mato Tipila is a vital cultural
resource for our people. When we go there in the
name of Tunkasila Wakan Tanka, we experience a
spiritual renewal. Even the grandchildren experience the intensity and special feeling of the butte
when they are taken there.”
The World of the Black Hills
IT WOULD BE A MISTAKE to consider Devils
Tower in isolation from its broader ecological
setting. For this horn-like butte stands near an
immense “hog back,” an oblong ridge that curves
nearly 200 miles from north to south and about
half that distance from east to west. Like a
protective barricade, the ridge orbits one of the
most unusual environmental features in the
United States—the Black Hills. A dark forested
island rising out of a sea of grass, the Black Hills
are as interesting culturally as they are geologically or botanically.
For thousands of years, Indian people made
exploratory, hunting forays into this isolated
uplift. Around 1000 B.C. they began hunting
there more extensively. By the l8th century, the
Hills were attracting the Crow, Kiowa, Cheyenne
and Lakota, and other Plains native groups as
well. Especially for the Lakota, the Hills became
Wamakaognaka E’cante, which translates as “the
heart of everything that is,” or Paha Sapa, literally
meaning “black hills.” “To the Indian spiritual
way of life,” said Lakota medicine man Pete
Catches in 1993, “the Black Hills is the center of
the Lakota people. There, ages ago, before
Columbus came over the sea, seven spirits came
to the Black Hills. They selected that area [and
that was] the beginning of sacredness to the
Lakota people.”
Until the middle of the 19th century, ownerhip
of the Black Hills was not an issue. When the U.S.
government signed its first treaty with most of the
major Plains Indian tribes at Ft. Laramie in 1851,
it affirmed Lakota rights to 60 million acres
including Devils Tower and all of the Black Hills.
(See maps above.) In 1868, following the First
Great Sioux War, a second Ft. Laramie treaty
Present-day Lakota claims of traditional
religious ties to the Hills are well-substantiated.
Included in a series of drawings produced by the
l9th century Lakota artist, Amos Bad Heart Bull,
is a pictoraphic map of the Black Hill’s many
revered sites. (See below.) Encircling the area one
clearly sees the oval race track, “Red Canyon,”
where it is said the world’s first animals ran an
epic foot race to see which would function as the
leading species. Directly at the heart of the Hills
lies Harney Peak, the craggy mountain where the
famous Oglala seer Black Elk experienced the
visions described in his autobiography, Black Elk
Speaks. Among other sites of cultural significance
nearby are The Old Woman’s Hill, The Dancer’s
Hill and Buffalo Gap.
Only a mile or so northeast of the sacred race
track stands the Hills’ best-known sacred place—
Mato Paha, or Bear Butte. Geologists call it a
“laccolith,” a volcano that never reached
eruption, as if still storing its force within. The
Mandan of North Dakota used to undertake
pilgrimages to this place; in 1857, it was the site
of a great council of the Teton and other Lakota
tribes, when Crazy Horse vowed to
resist the whites forever. Today it
remains a highly desirable location
for vision-questing.
Bear Butte is equally sacred to
the Cheyenne. Known as
Nowah’wus, it is where the tribe was
instructed about its life, given
relationships with the world’s
animals, and received ceremonies
that are still performed by the
Cheyenne today.
Around 1979, the sanctity of
Bear Butte was endangered when
Indian vision-questers were forced
to restrict the times they could fast,
and were told that portions of Bear
From A Pictographic History of the Oglala Sioux by Amos
Bad Heart Bull, Lakota, this 19th century ledger drawing clearly
Butte State Park would be off-limits
shows the Black Hills surrounded by the sacred hoop known as “the
to them while parking facilities were
racetrack,” along with Mato Tipila (aka Bear’s Lodge or Devils
expanded. This worsened Indian
Tower) at the top of the hoop and Bear Butte just outside the hoop.
resentment about signs posted at
© 1 96 7 & 1 9 9 5, U n i v e r s i t y o f N e b r a s k a P r e s s
SACRED LAND READER
• 36 •
reduced that to 26 million acres, but Devils Tower,
the Hills and all of South Dakota remained in
Lakota hands.
Then, in the summer of l874, General George
Armstrong Custer led an exploratory expedition
directly through the Hills, breaking the treaty and
confirming the existence of gold. Nothing could
brook the thousands of miners awaiting the goahead to claim creeks and build sluices throughout the region. Two years after the Lakota turned
down President Grant’s 1875 offer to buy the
Black Hills for $6 million, the U.S. Congress
passed the Black Hills Act, which transferred
ownership to non-Indians. From the 1920s until
today, groups of Lakota have filed claims in
various courts to recover the area. Finally, in
1979, the U.S. Indian Claims Commission decided
that the “Sioux Nation” deserved compensation
for the Hills, and offered an initial payment of
$105 million. But the following year the Indians
decided they would rather regain their beloved
lands, and they have thus far refused to accept the
claims settlement, which would permanently
extinguish their aboriginal title to the land.
• 37 •
SACRED PLACES
c h r i s to p h e r m c l e o d
W i l l Pa r r i n e l lo
park overlooks which informed
Devils Tower.” If climbers
tourists where Indians could be
refused, warned Monument
spotted conducting their
Superintendent Deb Liggett, the
religious practices. But Bear
Park would simply not issue
Butte was a multi-use state
climbing permits, making the
park, a registered National
June ban mandatory. The draft
Natural Landmark and a
plan also called for an outright
navigational guide for the flight
ban on commercial climbing.
Elaine Quiver (Lakota) at Mato Tipila
paths of supersonic aircraft. So
That caused commercial
in 1983, the joint Lakota and Cheyenne suit to
guide Andy Petefish to team up with the
fight these restrictions was turned down, and a
conservative Mountain States Legal Foundation
parking lot was built alongside the area where
and slap the Park Service with a lawsuit, accusing
they camp and conduct their ceremonial sweat
it of violating the climbers’ constitutional rights,
baths.
and of “establishing religion on a federally owned
About 60 miles to the west of Bear Butte, a
piece of ground.” In June 1996, a federal judge in
legal struggle over religious protection for Devils
Wyoming sided with the climbers, citing the
Tower National Monument came to a head in the
northern California G-O Road case as a precedent
early 1990s. Just as Indians were reasserting their
that “affirmative action by the National Park
religious rights to Black Hills sites, increasing
Service to exclude legitimate public use of the
numbers of rock climbers were registering to
tower for the sole purpose of aiding and advancclimb the tower.
ing some American Indians’ religious practices
To Indians, however, hammering pitons into
violates the First Amendment’s Establishment
this rock was a desecration. When spokespeople
Clause.”
such as Elaine Quiver of the Gray Eagle Society on
At the same time, Judge William Downes
the Pine Ridge (Lakota) Reservation complained,
refused to forbid the Park Service from making
“It’s a sacred site and should not be desecrated by
their verbal request to climbers for a voluntary
pounding on it,” some climbers responded that
halt during the month of June. In his words,
their sensations when ascending
“a voluntary program whereby
the Tower and their feeling of
climbers are encouraged to show
communion with nature were
respect for American Indian
just as spiritual. Besides, they
religious and cultural traditions
argued, the National Park
is both laudable and
Service’s policy of assuring
constitutionally permissible.”
“multiple use” of its sites
As a result of the Park
protected their right to climb.
Service’s consultation process
These sportsmen were
and public education program,
unhappy with the National Park
June climbing of Devils Tower
Service’s “Climbing
has decreased by 85%. Native
Management Plan,” issued in
people of the Plains look
February 1995. The new plan
forward to a day when all
called for a voluntary halt to
climbers voluntarily choose not
climbing during the “culturally
to climb the tower during every
significant” month of June, out
month of the year—and the
of respect for the “reverence
volcanic monolith is re-named
many American Indians hold for
Bear’s Lodge.
Climbing Devils Tower
southwest
“The Hopi Tusqua (land) is our Love and will always be, and it is the land
upon which our leader fixes and tells the dates of our religious life. Our
land, our religion, and our life are one…. It is from the land that each true
Hopi gathers the rocks, the plants, the different woods, roots, and his life,
and each in the authority of his rightful obligation brings to our
ceremonies proof of our ties to this land. Our footprints mark well the
trails to these sacred places where each year we go in performance of our
duties. It is upon this land that we have hunted and were assured of rights
to game such as deer, elk, antelope, buffalo, rabbit, turkey. It is here that
we captured the eagle, the hawk, and such birds whose feathers belong to
our ceremonies. It is over this land that many people [clan groups] have
come seeking places for settlement. It is here on this land that we are
bringing up our younger generation and through preserving the ceremonies
are teaching them proper human behavior and strength of character to
make them true citizens among all the people.”
—
F R O M A 19 51 H O P I P E T I T I O N T O T H E U . S . G O V E R N M E N T
“Jimson-Weed Pl ace”—The Destruction of
Wo odruff Butte
I
N 1992 , a contingent of Hopi Indian priests
were finishing their 1,100-mile pilgrimage to
nine major sacred shrines that mark the boundaries of their landscape in northern Arizona, the
traditional domain the tribe calls Hopitutskwa.
Located both inside and outside of their official
reservation’s perimeter, hundreds of shrines dot
the landscape of the Hopi’s ancestral territory.
Some shrines mark places where clans paused
during migrations. Others commemorate village
sites where Hopis once lived, or ancient footpaths
still in use today. Shrines also consecrate fresh
water springs, sites where salt is gathered or eagles
captured, and mountains where kachinas—the
rain-bringing spirits impersonated during ceremonies—live in the mists.
Periodically, the Hopis feel obliged to renew the
life-force of these places by visiting them to plant
prayer-sticks, or pahos, to pray and blow from
special prayer pipes the smoke which is equated
with moisture from rain-bearing clouds. As the
late chairman of the Hopi Tribal Council, Abbot
c h r i s to p h e r m c l e o d
• 39 •
SACRED PLACES
Sekaquaptewa, once
The Hopi visitors
explained, “The elders
were well aware that
say that the shrines are
their access to the site
our standards—the way
was tenuous and its
white people raise flags
future uncertain.
over their territory.
Since 1935, it had
Without our shrines,
been owned by nonan inheritance, we
Indian road-builders
simply cannot continue
who coveted its ironas Hopis.” Anthropolorich, angular cobbles.
Woodruff
Butte
gist Armin Geertz has
Already some Bearwritten of Hopi visitastrap clan shrines were
tion to the major tutskwa boundary shrines:
disturbed when a radio tower was constructed in
the l960s. But in 1990, immediately after the land
was leased to a gravel mining concern, a bulldozer
“Pilgrimages are made to the various ruins
tore into the butte.
which Hopi clan migration mythology lays
On this visit the Hopis confronted a barbed
claim to, and which are guarded by the clan
wire fence, with a crucified coyote hanging
ancestors. Clans made journeys to the
alongside a “No Trespassing” sign. After offering
former homes of their ancestors in order to
prayers, they left with heavy hearts. In l996,
keep an eye on the ruins, to keep the spirits
mining accelerated, obliterating more of their
alive as boundary guardians and to notify
them whenever major ceremonials were to
ancestral markers and destroying the Zuni shrine
be performed at home.”
as well. When the Hopis complained, a judge
suggested they buy the place for $3 million. At
present, Woodruff Butte is still being shortened
Traveling for four days in the clockwise
from the top and reduced, truckload by truckload,
direction, which is obligatory for Hopi ritual
to rubble. No court of law or public opinion h...
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