“I go to Chota for spiritual strength, and I want to take my children and grandchildren there,” testified Emmaline Driver (Cherokee), a witness in Ammoneta Sequoyah’s case to prevent the federal government from constructing a dam on the Little Tennessee River. The massive public works project threatened to flood the Tellico Valley, including the ancient village of Chota, one of the most sacred places for the Cherokee people. Lawyers for the National Indian Youth Council and the Native American Rights Fund worked tirelessly to collect as many affidavits as possible in hopes of convincing U.S. District Judge Robert L. Taylor that flooding the valley was a direct assault on the Cherokees’ constitutionally protected religious freedom.

Taylor was skeptical. Non-Native, trained in Western jurisprudence, and steeped in a Judeo-Christian understanding of religion, the judge had a difficult time wrapping his head around the concept that a place in nature could be sacred. Another witness, tribal member Robin Toineeta, tried to articulate it in terms that Taylor could understand: “This valley is holy. It is like church property,” she explained. “Most people feel differently when they go on church property because it is the house of God. To the Cherokees who do not go to a Christian church and who follow the traditional way of life . . . they get this same feeling when they go to Tellico.”

In the end, Judge Taylor’s mind proved too narrow. “The court has been cited to no case that engrains the free exercise clause with property rights,” he ruled. And with that, the Cherokee people lost one of their most sacred places.

A slew of similarly devastating verdicts followed Sequoyah v. TVA. Badoni v. Higginson (1977), Crow v. Gullet (1982), Wilson v. Block (1983), and Lyng v. Northwest Indian Cemetery Protective Association (1988), which went all the way up to the Supreme Court, underscored that there was seemingly a fundamental flaw in the Constitution, as the courts reasoned that taking steps to protect places deemed sacred by Native peoples violated the establishment clause in the First Amendment. For example, in Crow v. Gullet, which sought to prevent the development and desecration of Bear Butte in South Dakota, U.S. District Judge Andrew W. Bogue wrote, “We conclude that the free exercise clause places a duty upon a state to keep from prohibiting religious acts, not to provide the means for carrying them out.” In his landmark book, God Is Red, Vine Deloria Jr. (Standing Rock Dakota) explores some of these legal quandaries and dissects the deep cosmological and philosophical differences between Native ways of knowing and Western theology. Deloria, who was both an attorney and a seminary graduate (his father was an Episcopal priest), explains that Indigenous cosmologies view nature in terms of space with sacred places “having the highest possible meaning.” Alternatively, the Judeo-Christian tradition prioritizes time with a clear beginning and end, at least in our earthly existence. It is largely detached from nature, which is why the most sacred places are manmade structures like churches, mosques, and synagogues.

Congress sought to remedy the situation with the passage of the American Indian Religious Freedom Act, which protected the use of eagle feathers and peyote, but did little for safeguarding sacred places. U.S. Senators Daniel K. Inouye of Hawaii, John McCain of Arizona, and Tom Udall of New Mexico all proposed further legislation, but unfortunately their respective bills languished in committees, never reaching the floor of Congress.

Probably the best “fix” (albeit with shortcomings) was President Bill Clinton’s Executive Order 13007. The mandate called for all departments to “accommodate access to and ceremonial use of Indian sacred sites,” adding that the federal government should do everything possible to “avoid adversely affecting the physical integrity” of sites deemed sacred by Native peoples.

Today, sacred sites continue to face myriad threats, ranging from spraypainted graffiti to radioactive waste. And it has become glaringly apparent that we must find new and novel ways to address the problem, as well as the larger structural mechanisms that threaten not only specific sacred sites, but our very habitat. No place matches the intellectual wealth and is better suited for this great undertaking than tribal colleges and universities. TCUs bring together medicine people, traditional knowledge holders, legal scholars, and scientists. The very embodiment of self-determination, tribally controlled colleges and universities collectively constitute Indian Country’s greatest thinktank.

At the Institute of American Indian Arts (IAIA), legal scholar and emeritus professor Stephen Wall is illuminating the path forward. In the feature article, “Sacred Sites, Sacred Rites,” Wall meditates on the nature of the sacred and outlines current legal protections and their limitations. Many sites have gained protection under the Antiquities Act and National Historic Preservation Act, but often medicine people and knowledge holders are reluctant to disclose the location of other, more sensitive sacred locations for fear of opening them to exploitation and appropriation. At IAIA, Professor Wall developed a course on sacred places to explore these issues. “The goal of the course . . . is to raise student awareness so the next generation will better understand the dynamics of these conflicts,” Wall explains.

Other TCUs have likewise devised ways to incorporate sacred place protection into their curriculum. In the article, “Protecting the Sacred,” Wafa Hozien and Henry H. Fowler show how Navajo Technical University (NTU) has taken a multifaceted approach, employing guest lectures, workshops, and field trips to raise awareness and foster a sense of responsibility among the student body. The university also takes an all-hands-on-deck approach to this critical issue, marshalling the expertise of faculty across a wide range of disciplines. Navajo Nation Chief Justice Emeritus Robert Yazzie, electrical engineering professor Dr. Sundaram Arumugam, Diné Hataałii Association leader and culture professor Anson Etsitty, and building information modeling faculty Dr. Anusuya Vellingiri bring to the table an array of ideas and solutions from diverse perspectives.

A hard reality of Indigenous site protection is that so much hinges on outside actors, agencies, and enterprises that have little to no understanding of the sacred, as evidenced by judicial rulings and legislative shortcomings. But there is hope. Fred Chapman, an applied scientist from the University of Wyoming, has worked closely with the Bureau of Land Management (BLM) and Chief Dull Knife College on the Northern Cheyenne Ecoregional Ethnographic Assessment project, which is creating a customized database of cultural and environmental information that can help preserve and protect sacred places of the Northern Cheyenne. Like NTU, the project taps into the expertise of diverse faculty, as well as BLM staff. This collaboration between a federal agency and a tribal college is the first of its kind and can serve as a blueprint for other Native nations working to protect sacred places.

To paraphrase Martin Luther King Jr., the arc of history bends towards justice. Native nations have faced numerous setbacks and great adversity in protecting their most sacred places. But as this issue of Tribal College Journal illustrates, there is hope—and America’s tribal colleges are leading the way.

Bradley Shreve, PhD, is the editor of Tribal College Journal.

REFERENCES

Deloria Jr., V. (1973). God Is Red. New York: Laurel Press.

Shreve, B.G. (2007). Of Gods and Broken Rainbows: Native American Religions, Western Rationalism, and the Problem of Sacred Lands. New Mexico Historical Review, 82(3), 369-390.