My wife and I were walking up the trail to the Medicine Wheel. We had just parked our truck in the parking lot, which held about 25 vehicles. It was mid-morning on a Saturday and there were few tourists. The Medicine Wheel, located atop the Bighorn Mountains in Wyoming, is a celestial map with stones placed to indicate stars, solstices, and equinoxes. The site is considered sacred by various Plains tribes and is key to their star knowledge. It is hard to describe my emotions as we approached the site. Due to increases in tourist traffic—and unfortunately, I have to include my wife and myself in that “tourist” category—the Medicine Wheel has suffered. A barrier fence had to be erected to prevent people from walking on the wheel, restrooms have been added, and a regularly maintained path encircles the wheel. A Forest Service road leads to the site from the opposite direction, with all-terrain vehicles and jeeps driving right next to the wheel.

After we walked the path around the Medicine Wheel looking at the tobacco ties, fabric, and other offerings attached to the barrier fence, the ranger asked if we were Native. We said yes, so she offered to let us enter through the barrier fence and approach the wheel. There is no way to describe the outpouring of emotion both my wife and I felt. We went to the center, kneeled, and were totally unable to speak or express our feelings. Praying silently, because words would not come out of our mouths, we spent about 15 minutes inside the fence. We are eternally grateful for our experience with the power held by that place. Our experience at the wheel and with sites in and around our community remind us that there are places in the world that need honor, reverence, and protection.

NATURE OF THE SACRED

Since time immemorial, human beings have identified certain places around the world as sacred. There are many reasons. A sacred place could be where nature creates awe and sublimity, a place identified in origin stories, or a place where medicine is sought. Some sacred places are described as places that have been important in religious ceremony and ritual or where important historical events have occurred. Sacred places can also be places of tremendous knowledge, as with the Medicine Wheel.

Sacred places are set aside because of their sacral quality. But to recognize this implies that there is a duality—the sacred and the profane. There is that which is holy and that which is irreverent or sacrilegious. For example, a church, kiva, or sacred circle versus a bar, brothel, or other place of iniquity. Our world is full of tension between opposites: hot and cold, positive and negative, male and female, good and bad. Some of these dualities can be neutralized to a certain extent. Human gender identity is an example. But there are instances when the opposites are fixed, such as electromagnetic positives and negatives. When speaking of sacred places, is there a middle ground, a sliding scale so to speak? Someplace that is “kinda sacred” or “kinda profane”? If we live in a world of duality, what happens when all places are defined as sacred? If we say that all places are sacred, where does the profane reside? Industrial plants, land polluted with radioactive waste, or lands used to develop tools of war exist and we should work to reclaim them—but are they sacred? If all places are sacred, is the correlative that no places are sacred? And if a place is sacred, how do we protect it given all of the dysfunction that exists in the 21st century?

LEGAL PROTECTIONS AND THEIR LIMITATIONS

Protection for Indigenous sacred sites is a relatively new area of law. The racism of the 19th century led to the widely held belief that anything Indigenous is not worthy of protections. For example, many of the mounds in the Mississippi and Ohio basins were destroyed and the mound material was used for roads and fill. Often the people who destroyed the mounds did not attribute their existence to Native peoples. Once the archaeological riches of the Four Corners area (where Colorado, Utah, Arizona, and New Mexico meet) were discovered in the late 1880s, the market for pre-Columbian Native art expanded. The Antiquities Act of 1906 recognized that archaeological sites on public lands are important resources. The National Historic Preservation Act of 1966 requires that the federal government consider the impact of development on historical properties. Many states have also passed their own version of the National Historic Preservation Act. Despite these efforts, laws have had limited impact on Indigenous historical or sacred sites and do not guarantee protections or accessibility.

As important as the Antiquities Act and National Historic Preservation Act have been, those laws do not afford protections for the majority of Indigenous sacred sites. Many sites have been incorporated into the National Park System, including Devil’s Tower, Pipestone, Wind Cave, Chaco Canyon, and others. This provides these places with some protections, but those protections are not based on the affected tribes’ needs or desires. Many sites are located on public lands, such as those administered by the National Forest and Bureau of Land Management. These lands are subject to multiple use policies that purport to provide some protection as well as access to those lands for a variety of uses. Unfortunately, the activities that are privileged on Forest Service and BLM properties are economic in nature, like logging, mining, and tourism. It is not a high priority to leave the land or a specific site alone to be itself, or to leave a site undisturbed for foraging medicines and other materials. There are also many sites located on private land, and access to those sites depends wholly on the discretion of the landowner.

Complicating the need for protection and access to sacred sites is the vast variety of sites that are sacred to Indigenous peoples. There are places that, because of their majesty or obvious historical importance, are easily seen as sacred. But that is a minority of sacred places for Indian people. In some instances, shrines and other locations are not readily identified as sacred except by those who have had the teachings to know their location. There are places where food, medicines, and ritual materials are gathered, but they do not appear special in the eyes of the unenlightened. There are places in which generations of people have sought communication with the Spirit World, places that go unnoticed by local residents and landowners. There are also places that are identified as sacred because of the inherent power of the place, regardless of its majesty. Not many people have the teachings or natural intuition to recognize such places.

For more subtle sacred sites, those making land use decisions are often reluctant to provide protections, knowing the likelihood that decisions limiting development will be challenged by the industries interested in the land, whether it is mining, grazing, or tourism. In order to protect themselves, land managers request that the tribes seeking protections or access justify and prove their claims.

Atop Wyoming’s Bighorn Mountains at more than 9,600 feet elevation, the Medicine Wheel is both a sacred site and a designated National Historic Landmark. Due to increased tourism, the Bighorn National Forest had to erect a fence barrier to prevent site degradation and vandalism. Photo courtesy L. Merriot/Wikimedia Commons

The courts, administrative officers, and managers demand that the relevance of specific sites be disclosed as a part of the process for determining whether there will be protections. Tribes are then put into a difficult position. This can result in sharing aspects of tribal cosmology that should not be disclosed, such as in a public forum with records accessible by all in attendance. Tribal spiritual practitioners are reluctant to reveal the context that makes a particular space sacred. Revealing the reasons why a space is sacred opens that site up to exploitation. For example, Indigiphiles often seek out Indigenous sacred sites, which results in contamination and appropriation. Those antagonistic to Indigenous communities have been known to vandalize and desecrate such sites and spaces.

The courts have not been kind to Indigenous claims concerning the sacredness of spaces. Vine Deloria Jr. discusses this matter throughout his landmark book God Is Red. American courts have largely been unable to analyze Indigenous religious claims, falling back to analyses rooted in monotheistic belief systems and concepts based on organized religion. In his book In the Courts of the Conqueror, Walter Echo-Hawk analyzes three freedom of religion cases. Two of them were sacred place protection cases and one was based on the denial of freedom of religion by a state regulation. In the two sacred place protection cases, Lyng v. Northwest Indian Cemetery Protective Association (1988) and Wana the Bear v. Community Construction (1982), the courts failed to provide the sought-after protections. In both cases, the Native land protectors were up against formidable economic forces, indicating that perhaps the protection of Indigenous sacred sites is actually part of a religious conflict between Indigenous beliefs and the religious quality that money and progress hold in American society.

There is now a new phenomenon arising in relation to the designation and protection of sacred sites, with Chaco Canyon at its epicenter. Located in northwestern New Mexico’s San Juan Basin, Chaco Canyon and the extensive network of pre-contact villages and monumental buildings are held sacred by many Pueblo communities. Chaco Canyon is on the National Register of Historic Places and is a UNESCO World Heritage Site. However, due to national energy policy, the San Juan Basin has boomed from increased oil and natural gas development, most of which is based in fracking.

Fracking is a controversial and geologically disruptive process where sand and chemicals are introduced into a well that has been drilled both vertically and horizontally. The vertical shaft is drilled to the desired depth and a horizontal shaft is drilled, often for several thousand feet, into hydrocarbon-bearing strata. Chemicals and sand are placed under great pressure to crack the hydrocarbon-bearing strata, freeing natural gas. The pressure to release the hydrocarbons also impacts the surface, shaking buildings and even causing earthquakes. Water used to create the pressure becomes contaminated and there is concern that the process could negatively impact groundwater. Given its location, Chaco Canyon is surrounded by oil and gas fracking leases that threaten the integrity of the pre-historic structures in the canyon.

In 2022, Secretary of the Interior Deb Haaland imposed a ban on fracking within 10 miles of the Chaco Culture National Historical Park. However, Navajo Nation President Buu Nygren has opposed the ban, stating that it deprives Navajo allottees of revenues from leases to multinational energy corporations.

For several years there has been a movement to protect Chaco Canyon from the effects of fracking, yet it was not until 2022 that Department of Interior Secretary Deb Haaland imposed a ban on fracking within a 10-mile radius of Chaco. But Navajo Nation President Buu Nygren and a coalition of Navajos who own land allotments within the 10-mile fracking ban zone have come out against the protections. Under the ban, Navajo land allottees can no longer lease their lands for development; the ban effectively limits the economic opportunities for the allottees and their families. The Navajo Nation has expressed concern over the impact of the ban on the economic development of the allotted portion of the reservation. This creates a novel situation for Indigenous communities: Native peoples resisting the protection of an Indigenous sacred site because of economics.

PREPARING PROTECTORS

These are some of the topics researched and discussed in “Sacred Places, Sacred Rights,” an upper-division, Indigenous liberal studies course at the Institute of American Indian Arts. The seminar was developed a few years ago and is offered every few semesters. Sacred Places, Sacred Rights explores “the relationship between human beings and places in the world that are considered to have a sacred character,” reads the course description. The course examines “human and land-based characteristics that create a sacral quality. Legal issues relating to protection and access of sacred sites will be explored.” The core reading is Deloria’s God Is Red, with further commentary from both Indigenous and non- Indigenous writers on the nature of the sacred and sacred sites. Through the course, students also look at laws, policies, and court cases that impact sacred sites. The first half of the semester covers the nature of sacred places. After midterms, the course materials move into legal matters based on court cases, policy papers, and direct-action reports. The course examines laws and policies that have been passed with the goal of protecting sacred sites, or guaranteeing access to those sites, and explores the nature of balancing interests and policies when opposing needs come into conflict. Court decisions and specific laws, such as the American Indian Religious Freedom Act (1978), are analyzed and critiqued. Two case studies are also examined: the designation of Mount Taylor in New Mexico as Tribal Cultural Property and an analysis of the current controversies surrounding the establishment of the 10-mile buffer zone around Chaco Canyon to prevent fracking and natural gas development. Lectures are varied but focused on the context of conflict around the protection of Indigenous sacred sites, sometimes exploring the nature and history of Christianity in order to appreciate the difference between Indigenous spiritual expression and the Abrahamic religions (Judaism, Christianity, and Islam). Other lectures address the nature of religious freedom in the United States or interrogate sacred site-related court cases.

The tribal college classroom is the ideal place to educate and prepare future leaders to grapple with the myriad issues surrounding sacred sites and their protection. Photo by Jason Ordaz/IAIA

Sacred Places, Sacred Rights is a synchronous online course structured to facilitate discussion and create the opportunity for students to engage with the course content. The seminar-style class is scheduled for two and a half hour sessions. In the first half of every class, each student gives a presentation that reflects on the readings or upon previous classes, then opens those presentations for class discussion. The second half of class is typically a lecture by the instructor or the viewing of an applicable video.

Sacred Places, Sacred Rights is a relevant and necessary course in today’s world. Resource extraction, tourism, and population growth all put pressure on places that Indigenous communities have held sacred. This pressure often builds to the point where a government acts to sanction the human activity threatening our sacred places. Thus, many Indigenous sacred sites have been compromised or even destroyed before the altar of development and economic growth.

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Indigenous sacred sites are in a precarious position. As Native communities practice or reconstruct their spiritual heritage, access to and protection of sacred sites becomes increasingly important. There are growing conflicts between non-Native economic demands, such resource extraction, commerce, housing, recreation, and transportation needs, and tribal spiritual practices. As conflict arises between the sacred and profane uses of particular spaces, it becomes evident that legal protections are illusory. The goal of the course Sacred Places, Sacred Rights is to raise student awareness so the next generation will better understand the dynamics of these conflicts. As students write their analyses of Indigenous sacred sites and the challenges they face, they become more aware of the subtleties of the myriad conflicts, developing their own perspectives and arguments for advocacy and sacred site protection.

Stephen Wall, JD (Ojibwe), is an emeritus professor at the Institute of American Indian Arts and author of American Indian Tribal Governance: A Critical Perspective.

REFERENCES

Deloria Jr., V. (2003). God Is Red (2nd ed.). Golden, CO: Fulcrum Publishing.

Echo-Hawk, W. (2012). In the Courts of the Conqueror. Arvada, CO: Fulcrum Publishing.

National Public Radio. (2023, October 5). Not All Tribes Agree with Drilling Ban Around Chaco Canyon in New Mexico [Radio broadcast]. Morning Edition. Retrieved from https://www.npr.org/2023/10/05/1203823542/not-alltribes- agree-with-drilling-ban-around-new-mexicos-chaco-canyon

Gray, L. (Producer & Director). (1999). Cahokia: America’s Lost City [Documentary episode]. In R. Denton, S. Adams, & S. Winslow (Executive producers), Ancient Voices. British Broadcasting Corporation, the Learning Channel, and Time-Life Video.

McLeod, C. (Producer & Director). (2001). In the Light of Reverence. Oley, PA: Bullfrog Films.