Native American Religions, the First Amendment, and the Judicial Interpretation of Public Land

Abstract

The decade of the 1980s witnessed a striking emergence of claims within the United States' judicial system that uniquely expressed the convergence of religious freedom on the one hand and the sacrality of the earth on the other. Beginning in 1980 and extending through 1988, various Native American Indian peoples alleged in court actions that particular decisions made or contemplated by federal land management agencies would not only desecrate the land in question, but in that very process, would interfere with and deprive them of their constitutionally protected right of religious exercise. Specifically, the Indian plaintiffs based their claims primarily upon the religion clauses of the Constitution's First Amendment that Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof.... The Amendment's two clauses bar governmental action when that action either entangles the government in the