Spiritual Genocide: The Denial of American Indian Religious Freedom, from Conquest to 1934

Abstract

I I June 26, 2002, the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals in San Francisco ruled that the words under in the Pledge of Allegiance are unconstitutional, because they violate the establishment clause of the First Amendment. The resulting outpouring of sanctimonious criticism and superpatriotic zeal to put God back into the Pledge of Allegiance is tragically ironic if one reflects on the more than two hundred years of religious oppression that the indigenous peoples and nations of the United States have endured while white America scarcely raised an objection. Until 1935, the traditional (non-Christian) religions of the American Indians were banned outright on the reservations, and Indian people practicing their religious beliefs could be fined and sent to prison. The Sweat Lodge purification ritual and the beautiful Sun Dance religion were outlawed, and many other spiritual practices driven underground. At the same time, Christianity was forced on the Native Peoples by the missionaries. Indeed, it took a special act of Congress, the 1978 American Indian Religious Freedom Act (AIRFA), to affirm religious freedom for the Native nations. The law lacked teeth, however; it contained no civil or criminal penalties that would serve to implement it.' Furthermore, AIRFA did not fully address the deeper spiritual aspects of traditional belief and practice, especially concerning sacred objects and human remains, sacred sites, and indigenous intellectualproperty rights. Subsequently, through lobbying and political pressure by Native people and their allies, important new legislation was U u