American Indian Religious Freedom Research Articles

Review: Religion and Culture in Native America, by Suzanne Crawford O’Brien with Inés Talamantez

Review: <i>Religion and Culture in Native America</i>, by Suzanne Crawford O’Brien with Inés Talamantez

NAGPRA and Commodification of Cultural Property: A Legal Mechanism to Prevent Its Transfer to Europe and Return to the Native Nations

The movement for restoration of Native American cultural property began with the enactment of the American Indian Religious Freedom Act 1978 followed by the Native American Graves Protection and Repatriation Act 1990 (NAGPRA). However, the federal legislation has been restricted because the desecrations of graves and funeral artifacts have continued to be appropriated and transferred from the reservations to their destinations in museums and auctions houses abroad. They have mostly ended up in Europe and are displayed against the will of the Native tribes from whose lands they have been moved. The domestic legal umbrella of NAGPRA does not provides protection when cultural property is resident abroad and the framework of ‘soft’ international law such as the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organisation Convention (UNESCO) Convention and UNIDROIT Convention are not sufficient to facilitate their repatriation. The preventative extraterritorial legal regime has not been successful in transferring cultural property and there needs to be an improved mechanism devised to apprehend and to repatriate them to the original owners. This article argues for a framework that is international and which imposes sanctions when the iconographic property that is stolen is moved and is stored or sold for monetary gain and for its return to the rightful owners.

Why You Can’t Teach United States History without American Indians

Why You Can’t Teach United States History without American Indians emerged from the symposium of the same name at the Newberry Library in May 2013. The authors, though mainly historians, represent an interdisciplinary group committed to getting American history college instructors to “recast their survey history classes” toward the centrality of American Indians to US history (1). The editors intend that the work will “offer college teachers a toolbox of articles to help them transform their approach” (2). To this end, the book’s three parts offer two main types of essays: historiographic critiques and informative pieces that offer topics for consideration in survey courses.Part 1, “U.S. History to 1877,” consists of two critiques and seven topical presentations. The two critical essays decry the absence of Native polities in maps historically and presently in textbooks—unless, that is, they depict the reservation period, thereby creating a “declension narrative” at odds with the agency of Native nations (22–23). Moreover, the preponderant absence of Indians in college textbooks leads to neglect of the story of contention for homeland and of dispossession that also should reveal Native survival and sovereignty. Textbook maps require revision highlighting “Indian presence and possession” to “be more accurate as well as a superior teaching tool” (71).The Indian-focused topical pieces in part 1 include three describing historical processes and four describing events. The process articles call for greater recognition of Indian history in the North Atlantic trade conducted in the sixteenth century, in the dislocation caused by the Doctrine of Discovery and Manifest Destiny, and in slavery both as slaves and as owners. The articles featuring events explain the importance of looking at Indians in Bacon’s Rebellion, the California gold rush, and the Civil War and at women playing roles in the American Revolution. These essays go beyond victimization and project Native agency.Part 2, “U.S. History since 1877,” possesses a greater balance of three critiques and four topical essays. The critiques explain that textbooks should add diplomacy and survivability to treatment of the western Indian wars. Also, textbooks would better present Native history by “positioning the American Indian self-determination movement in the era of civil rights” and by positioning the struggle for American Indian religious freedom alongside the “larger story of religious resurgence in America” (197, 227). Two of the topical considerations delve into the reading revolution in Native America and the use of primary sources to analyze Native participation in the New Deal. The other topical considerations cover the more general topics of Indian movement to cities and the impact on Indian Country of the power consumption that has fueled suburbanization.Part 3, “Reconceptualizing the Narrative,” comprises three critical essays. The concept of teaching American history with a colonialism theme pervades two of the articles. The first maintains that settler colonialism keeps Native Americans central to the narrative. The second explains the usefulness of a focus on imperialism and the indigenous response to it for viewing American history with a global comparative perspective. The third notes that typical surveys omit Native sovereignty as part of the federalism experience and calls for rectifying this omission to generate a more complete study.This book makes a definitive case for thorough treatment of American Indian history in the survey narrative. College instructors who already draw on this history will want to recommend the text to colleagues who do not. Secondary teachers also should find it relevant. The critiques prove useful both for framing instruction and for incorporating historiographic analysis in the classroom. The topical essays provide subjects for enriched study. Some essays are more compelling than others, but all warrant consideration with respect to teaching the survey. The very gathering of these essays under a clear title calling for inclusion of American Indians in survey courses bears historiographic significance. One of the book’s editors, Jean M. O’Brien, provides an apt conclusion: “The fundamental truth is that, of course, you can teach U.S. history without Indians—it happens all the time, [but] you shouldn’t teach U.S. history without Indians . . . if you want to get the story right” (115).

Prevalence of reported peyote use 1985-2010 effects of the American Indian Religious Freedom Act of 1994.

Peyote was classified as a hallucinogen in the Drug Abuse Control Act of 1965, leaving American Indian (AI) religious use in legal ambiguity. In 1994, the American Indian Religious Freedom Act was amended to unambiguously protect the right of religious use of peyote for AIs. The purpose of this article is to report the prevalence rates of peyote use by AIs compared to the rest of the US population and to determine what effect the act's passage had on peyote use rates. This investigation utilized an analysis of existing archived large nationally representative surveys of the American population. Data on peyote use rates was determined for most years 1985 through 2010. A total of 886,088 completed surveys were analyzed, of which 12,749 were from AIs. Use rates were triangulated using peyote harvest data. Peyote use for AIs and the rest of the US population has remained stable between 1% and 2%. American Indian use rose dramatically in the 4 years following the AIRFA and leveled to just under 10%. The rapidity of the rise was excessive in light of the growth in the NAC and compared to the amounts of peyote stocks available. It is hypothesized that social desirability biases suppressed the Pre-AIRFA use rates due to peyote illegal status. Beyond describing peyote use rates and the effects of the AIRFA, this research adds to the body of evidence regarding the levels of under-reporting of illicit drugs.

Bundling the Day and Unraveling the Night

Bundling the Day and Unraveling the Night Margaret Noodin (bio) To mark the hundredth anniversary of the founding of the Society of American Indians, a group of friends and scholars traveled from The Ohio State University to a golf course in nearby Newark. There, among the tended greens, they climbed to the center of Observatory Mound and gazed across the Octagon Earthworks built by the Hopewell people between 100 bc and 400 ad. What can be known when gathering in a place centuries old? How have the shadows shifted? What traces left by others are real and what traces of today can be left in places where the layers of time are so visible? We knew these mounds, like the ancestors of those gathered, were Indigenous, crafted by people who planted, sowed, traded, and traveled near the waterways of the Great Lakes. People who fashioned small figurines and built vast geometrically perfect shapes centered on the arc of the lunar cycle. They wore large earrings, mined copper, gathered meteors, and buried their dead carefully, with precision, in mounds of earth. The stories they carved in stone included bears and severed heads. It is difficult to know much more for certain. We also knew that our more immediate predecessors came from many Native nations and were not yet citizens of the United States. Yet, when they gathered on the mound they sang the song Martin Luther King wove into his Dream speech, the song sung at both of Barack Obama’s inaugural celebrations, a song many forget is based on the British national anthem . . . “My Country ’Tis of Thee.” It is easy to understand the force with which they must have sung, “My native country, thee . . . I love thy rocks and rills, Thy woods and templed hills.” But the poignant irony of this particular group singing “Land where my fathers died . . . Land of the pilgrims’ pride” provokes a sort of melancholy that [End Page 237] postcolonial theorists might today connect to historical trauma. The first American lyrics were proudly written in 1831, shortly after President Andrew Jackson signed the Indian Removal Act setting in motion decades of removal, including the infamous Trail of Tears. Standing on the mounds in 2011, we knew the impact of the Reorganization Act, the cataclysmic ripple of the American Indian Movement, the importance of the American Indian Religious Freedom Act, and the ongoing struggles to uphold the Native American Graves Protection and Repatriation Act. These laws came together here, these longitudes of practice and latitudes of purpose. Standing in a place that connected minds on earth with celestial time, I finally understood the theory of relativity. Space and time are related. Light and sound have speed. And perhaps the best way to stop time or cross time or step out of time altogether is to make sound. Not one of us moved one archeological spoon of earth, but we offered instead waves of sound across the day. We came to this ancient place and traded feelings with the unknown. Like those who came before us, we sang of the nations we wished most to represent. Many of us, already citizens of beautiful America, sang of our sovereign nations. Like those before us we stood in a space marked by the past and sang into the future. Jane Hafen sang a Hopi harvest song of gratitude she learned from her brother, John Rainer Jr. Alice Te Punga Somerville sang a Maori song from the other side of the world. LeAnne Howe sang a warrior’s song and pointed out that Choctaws were mound builders in the not too distant past. “I sing it quite a bit,” she said, “especially when I need strength to fight off something. I didn’t like the feeling of the invasion I had there: The men at work blowing away leaves, the grounds keepers’ keeping an eye on us, the rude men driving their golf carts over the mounds . . . just because they could.” Monique Mojica said hers was not a “traditional” cultural song but one she created for her play Chocolate Woman Dreams the Milky Way. She explained, “I chose it over other prayer songs I could have offered because in the...

&lt;em&gt;In the Light of Reverence&lt;/em&gt; and the Rhetoric of American Indian Religious Freedom: Negotiating Rights and Responsibilities in the Struggle to Protect Sacred Lands

&lt;em&gt;In the Light of Reverence&lt;/em&gt; and the Rhetoric of American Indian Religious Freedom: Negotiating Rights and Responsibilities in the Struggle to Protect Sacred Lands

Upholding Indigenous Freedoms of Religion and Medicine: Peyotists at the 1906–1908 Oklahoma Constitutional Convention and First Legislature

Upholding Indigenous Freedoms of Religion and MedicinePeyotists at the 1906–1908 Oklahoma Constitutional Convention and First Legislature Dennis Wiedman (bio) In February 1908 newspapers throughout Oklahoma reported that the hotel lobbies of Guthrie, the capital of the new state of Oklahoma, were crowded with Indian men, women, and children. At the thirty-sixth day of the first Oklahoma legislature, just sixty days after the state was established by merging Indian and Oklahoma Territories, more than a hundred prominent representatives of the Comanche, Kiowa, Cheyenne, Osage, Ponca, Arapaho, Iowa, and Sac and Fox tribes filled the legislative hall. On four occasions, twice during the constitutional convention and twice at the first Oklahoma legislature six months later, Indian leaders assertively voiced their concerns about laws that restricted their rights to practice their medicine and religion. At the Senate legislative hearings, Chessie McIntosh, a member of the Creek Nation, a lawyer, and a delegate at the earlier constitutional convention for the unsuccessfully proposed state of Sequoyah, expressed the importance of the moment: Ladies and Gentlemen, in conclusion, I thank the people of the great State of Oklahoma for the consideration given the Indian in the late Constitutional Convention; I thank you for what I have never seen in any Legislature before, and I have been to the assembling of more than one state legislature—I have never seen where the Indians were invited into the Legislative Chamber and asked to present his wants. I thank you for that, and for the perpetuation of the souls of the different Nations to agree to come as you have done in the Great Seal of the State of Oklahoma, and I hope and trust that the Indian will make one of the best citizens of this State.1 [End Page 215] These debates and discourses at the juncture of state formation structured the chartering of the Native American Church (NAC) in Oklahoma ten years later in 1918, creating the legal foundation for the practice of Peyotism throughout the United States and Canada, where it is now the largest intertribal Indigenous religion in North America. In the five hundred years of European and American globalization of the world, seldom have Indigenous peoples been invited to a constitutional convention and first legislature to express their perspectives and concerns. The use of peyote by the Indigenous peoples of the southern plains and northern Mexico is ancient, dating back thousands of years to at least 5200 BP.2 Indigenous peoples expressing their desires to practice their traditional medicines and religions directly to lawmakers at the formation of a state is a rare occasion in the United States or elsewhere in the world. Rarely in the five-hundred-year history of the European and American colonization of the world were the rights of the Indigenous peoples considered at the juncture when new political entities established their constitutions and first laws. Typically, nation-states attempt to extinguish Indigenous rights to land and resources, refuse to grant their political legitimacy, and severely persecute traditional healing and religious practices. Not until 1978 did the United States grant religious freedom to Native Americans.3 Peyotists were not protected by federal law until 1994, when President Clinton signed the amendments to the American Indian Religious Freedom Act.4 Not until September 2007 did the United Nations declare that nations recognize Indigenous rights to their spiritual and religious traditions as well as their traditional medicines and health practices.5 This article portrays this critical juncture in 1907 when the American nation-state imposed its full legal, economic, political, and value system upon more than forty Indigenous nations by merging Indian Territory and Oklahoma Territory into the state of Oklahoma. This critical political and cultural event, where Indigenous peoples expressed their rights for religion and medicine, is not documented nor analyzed in the literature. Even though Sidney Slotkin in his 1956 book, The Peyote Religion, details many of the legal and political events in defense of Peyotism, there is no mention of these hearings at the formation of the state of Oklahoma.6 A photograph and six paragraphs in the 1987 book Peyote Religion by Omer Stewart briefly mention this historic event in the chapter on how...

To an Unknown God: The Hidden History of Employment Division v. Smith

Supreme Court's decision in Employment Division v. Smith, is once again law of land-and once again, generally applicable laws may be applied to religious practices even when not supported by a compelling governmental interest.In City of Boerne v. Flores, Court invalidated, at least as applied to State governments, Religious Freedom Restoration Act (RFRA). RFRA was passed by Congress with explicit aim of voiding Smith's holding that the right of free exercise does not relieve an individual of obligation to comply with a 'valid and neutral law of general applicability on ground that law proscribes (or prescribes) conduct that his religion prescribes (or proscribes).' The Smith doctrine was at least implicitly upheld by six-Justice majority in Flores. opinion not only restated Smith rule, it further repeated controversial hybrid doctrine enunciated for first time by Justice Scalia in Smith II: The only instances where a neutral, generally applicable law had failed to pass constitutional muster, Smith Court noted, were cases in which other constitutional protections were at stake.The Flores Court's implied reaffirmation of Smith is remarkable because Smith was one of most unpopular decisions in Court's recent history. Learned commentators have almost unanimously excoriated Court's result and rationale. Journalistic commentators have been scathing. United States Congress expressed its opinion of decision in unmistakable terms by its passage of not one but two statutes purporting to void result. Besides RFRA, which mentions Smith II by name, Congress in 1994 also passed amendments to American Indian Religious Freedom Act that mandate an exemption from state and federal drug laws for religious use of peyote by Native Americans. Despite this repudiation, Court has seemingly embraced Smith II once again. time is more than ripe, therefore, for an examination of case that has brought us to this point.In 1994, I set out to find and document actual people and decisions that created case. technique I used is familiar to historians - interviews designed to supplement and illuminate written record.' use of oral history is designed to elicit kind of information often omitted by those who prepare written documents.Part II of this Article is a summary of Al Smith's remarkable life, much of it in his own words; a brief profile of Galen Black, his Anglo co-claimant; and an account of career of Smith's tenacious adversary, Dave Frohnmayer. Part III provides an introduction to legal and constitutional background in Oregon at time case arose, with emphasis on violent encounter between State and religious commune in eastern Oregon known as Rajneeshpuram. Part IV details dispute that led to dismissal of Black and Smith. Parts V-VII consider case in its first iteration through state courts and U.S. Supreme Court. Part VIII details extraordinary efforts at settlement of case that took place shortly before argument in Smith II. Part IX describes argument from point of view of participants. Part X analyzes response to Smith II, in Oregon and across nation. In my Conclusion, I argue that difficulties our legal system has had in dealing with Smith II are but a foretaste of coming religion cases, as our courts grapple with Free Exercise Clause-our Constitution's altar to an unknown god.

Indian Wars: Old and New

This short paper analyzes American history from the modern “wars” on poverty, drugs, and terror from the perspective of American Indians and Indian tribes. These domestic “wars” are aptly named (it turns out), as the United States often blindly pursues broad policy goals without input from tribal interests, and without consideration to the impacts on Indians and tribes. With the possible exception of the “war on poverty,” these domestic wars sweep aside tribal rights, rights that are frequently in conflict with the overarching federal policy goals.This essay explores three declared domestic wars, and their impacts on American Indian tribes and individual Indians, in loose chronological order, starting with the war on poverty. As Part 1 demonstrates, the Johnson Administration’s Great Society programs helped to bring American Indian policy out of the dark ages of the era of termination, in which Congress had declared that national policy would be to terminate the trust relationship. Part 2 describes the war on drugs, declared by the Reagan Administration, which had unusually stark impacts on reservation communities both in terms of law enforcement, but also on American Indian religious freedom. Part 3 examines the ongoing war on terror, which Bush Administration officials opined has its legal justification grounded in part on the Indian wars of the 19th century. The war on terror marks America’s return to fighting a new Indian war, where the adversary is illusive and motivated, and where the rule of law is literally obliterated.

Developing Spiritual Competency with Native Americans: Promoting Wellness through Balance and Harmony

Native Americans tend to hold culturally unique beliefs about the origin of problems and the ways in which those problems can be ameliorated. For most Native American tribal communities, spirituality is interconnected with health and well-being. Accordingly developing some degree of spiritual competency is essential for work with Native American clients. Consequently this paper discusses the relationship between spirituality and health, highlighting the roles that balance and harmony play in fostering health and well-being in many tribal cultures. Also discussed are common spiritual beliefs and practices, the American Indian Religious Freedom Act, areas of potential value conflict, and practice suggestions to enhance spiritual competency when working with Native Americans.

Montagnes mythiques des Indiens des États-Unis : le sacré et le juridique

In the United States the protection of sacred mountains is guaranteed by the First Amendment, at least since 1978, when the American Indian Religious Freedom Act was passed. Subsequent legislative texts have enhanced the right of Native Americans to access sites located on federal land. Moreover tribes argue that the presence of other activities on their sacred sites is often akin to prohibiting their religion. While federal authorities often take Native American requests into account, they also tend to blur the reasons for protecting their sacred sites, arguing that other—often cultural and mainstream—reasons exist warranting the protection. On the other hand, strong mainstream lobbies are also a factor hampering Native American demands. This article is based on three examples of sacred mountains: Devils Tower, Cave Rock, and the San Francisco Peaks

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

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

Native American justice

Part 1 Indian Policies, Treaties, and Rights Chapter 2 The Genesis of Indian-US Relations Chapter 3 Civil Rights, Self-Determination, and the New Federalism Part 4 Indian Justice Chapter 5 Aboriginal Justice: Cherokee Blood Vengeance Chapter 6 American Indian Religious Freedom within the Criminal Justice Context: History, Current Status, and Prospects for the Future Part 7 Indian Courts and Jurisdictions Chapter 8 Unequal Justice and Punishment under the Law Chapter 9 Tribal Courts: Self-Determination and Limited Justice Chapter 10 The Navajo Court System Chapter 11 Law Enforcement and Corrections in Indian Country Part 12 Epilogue: The Issue of Social Justice in Indian Country

American Indian Religious Freedom Act after Twenty-five Years: An Introduction

Henceforth it shall be the policy of the United States to protect and preserve for American Indians their inherent right of freedom to believe, express, and exercise the traditional religions of the American Indian, Eskimo, Aleut, and Native Hawaiians, including but not limited to access to sites, use and possession of sacred objects, and the freedom to worship through ceremonials and traditional rites. -American Indian Religious Freedom Act of

The American Indian Religious Freedom Act -- Looking Back and Looking Forward

The American Indian Religious Freedom Act -- Looking Back and Looking Forward

Blessing and Welcome

Blessing and Welcome Wallace Coffey (bio) I want to welcome you and give you just a little overview of why we're here. I am the chairman of the Comanche Tribe. I am in my third term as chair. My folks said that it was going to be that way. Not because it was something that I wanted to do but because of something that was a responsibility and handed down to me. I'm a descendant of Ten Bears. Some of you may have seen the movie Dances with Wolves. Ten Bears was that central character. He was my great-great-grandfather. He also was in the movie The Outlaw Josey Wales. He established for us a position of responsibility to be handed down so that we might carry this responsibility into our future generations for our children yet to come. I used to characterize my behavior a long time ago as having historical trauma. Some of our Indian people are going through that. Many times in this modern world there is a lot of anger, a lot of rage, sometimes people take it out on themselves, sometimes on others. Many of our young people, as Lenny Foster will tell you, are incarcerated because they don't understand the spiritual path that has been handed down to us from our relatives, our ancestors from long ago. Well, I'm glad to say it's good to be Indian. How many of you remember where you were in 1978 when the American Indian Religious Freedom Act was passed? How many were not even born then? Our Indian peoples have a memory that lasts for a long, long time. Next month in November will be the fortieth anniversary of the assassination of a president in 1963. That was devastating to me as a young [End Page 137] Indian boy in high school at the time. I remember where I was in 1968 when a man who had a dream was assassinated. I remember where I wasin 1973 during the occupation of Wounded Knee, prior to that thetakeover in Washington, DC, and I can see some other faces here that were there, too. In 1978 I graduated with a master's degree from Harvard University, at the same time that the American Indian Religious Freedom Act was being passed. As my nephew Walter "Bunky" Echo-Hawk will tell you, we grew up in a time of social unrest in the 1960s, when there were a lot of civil rights problems and difficulties (1960s and early 1970s). There were programs that were initiated in the 1970s, like affirmative action and equal opportunity employment, that provided some opportunities for our minority populations across this country. But Indian people didn't request affirmative action or equal opportunities; we requested the American Indian Religious Freedom Act. We wanted to be what we are. That was a very significant piece of legislation because for the past twenty-five years I have seen some wonderful things out there in Indian Country. I have seen the incorporation of celebration and ceremony in many different tribes all across the United States, including Canada. I was twenty-one years old when I was behind the microphone at a powwow in Bacone College, Muskogee, Oklahoma. Their master of ceremonies didn't show up, and so they said, "Well, get Wallace, he'll do it," and all of a sudden there I was. For the past thirty-six years I have been master of ceremonies at powwows, ceremonies, and events all across theUnited States, and in my travels throughout Indian Country I've hadrelationships with different tribes. I've sat intheir ceremonies; I've participated in their celebrations. I've got grandsons in Onion Lake, Saskatchewan, and they sing Comanche peyote songs, and we sit there and we tie drum. I've got relatives all the way down in Florida, our Seminole Nation, our Mikasuki people. I go into Canada to the Mohawk Nation of Akwesasne, or to Six Nations Ontario, or to the Pechanga reservation in California, and all the Midwestern tribes all across theUnited States; I have seen some wonderful things. I have relatives inHidatsa country in New Town, North Dakota...

Issues in the Implementation of the American Indian Religious Freedom Act: Panel Discussion

I would like to acknowledge all of our friends and relatives who have taken time to come and be with us. One of my good friends and colleagues and a former attorney for our Comanche tribe is here, Glen Feldman, and I know that he worked tremendously hard on the American Indian Religious Freedom Act, many times in the years back, and that's why we are going to discuss today the issues with regard to the implementation of the AIRFA. But I wanted to share with you that right after we conclude this panel, I'm going to call on my brother over there from the Ho-Chunk Nation to do a prayer and a short ceremony for Arvol Looking Horse. He just got a call that his mother is going into the hospital for back surgery. They were planning on leaving this conference and taking her up into Canada so she can participate in a ceremony, a healing ceremony, but unfortunately she had to be taken into the hospital on an emergency basis, so as Indian people, we always take time and we pray-pray to the spirits of our ancestors and through our a 153 loved ones that they will watch over and comfort his mom while she is going through this serious operation on her back. And to those of you who still have your parents, I wish you the best. I hope you have your parents-your moms and dads-for a long time. This past August, I lost my mom. Ninety-five years of age, and I'm very fortunate to have had my mother that length of time. But my greatest inspiration has

Religious Freedom and Native Sovereignty -- Protecting Native Religions through Tribal, Federal, and State Law: Panel Discussion

As I was coming down here, I was going through a lot of different thoughts about how I could address the anniversary of the American Indian Religious Freedom Act and at the same time remain truthful to myself and to the things I believe. Quite frankly, I'm disappointed, after twenty-five years of the effects of this act, that we haven't had as stark a turnaround in American culture as I thought might have been possible. While I was thinking about speaking to you, a phrase popped into my mind that has to do with property. For me, the greatest thing > has been the loss of lands that we've all suffered from. We've lost a whole American continent: the whole thing. At least for a period of time, people, the U.S. government, tried or at least made some statement that there were going to be reparations, and they sort of forced these reparations down our throats in the form of the Indian Land p 185 Claims Commission work. I feel very sad about it, because in the law when we talk about property we say there is a bundle of rights that exist in property. Sometimes you peel them away, and there are mineral rights, and there is a surface estate, and the phrase that popped into my mind was that for Native people there has always been this radiant sense of belonging. It was part of that bundle, and nobody in Congress

Connecting National Parks to People and People to National Parks: Muriel Crespi's Contribution to the Policies and Practices

In 1987, a Federal Register notice was released entitled "Native American Relationships Management Policy."1 This document was eye opening and insightful in its scope, for it articulated the National Park Service's (NPS) responsibility for addressing issues involving Native Americans. The first Native American relationships policy developed by a U.S. land management bureau, this document was written partly as an NPS response to policy guidance for the American Indian Religious Freedom Act (1978). However, it was more than just a response; it directed NPS personnel how to effectively recognize and respond to Native American connections to parklands and highlighted the need for consultation with affected tribes. Dr. Muriel (Miki) Crespi, Chief Ethnographer of the NPS, was the author of this groundbreaking document. The policy guidance was integrated into the NPS Management Polices in 1988 to address the official NPS position regarding Native Americans, and became the foundation for the NPS applied anthropology or "ethnography" program. This paper discusses how the influence of Miki Crespi led to the development of sensitive policies and practices within the NPS regarding not only Native Americans, but other ethnic minorities whose multiple heritages are now the foci in many NPS locales throughout the U.S.

Religious freedom and Indian rights: the case of Oregon v. Smith

The Supreme Court's controversial decision in Oregon v. Smith sharply departed from previous expansive readings of the First Amendment's religious freedom clause and ignited a firestorm of protest from legal scholars, religious groups, legislators, and Native Americans. Carolyn Long provides the first book-length analysis of Smith and shows why it continues to resonate so deeply in the American psyche. In 1983, Klamath Indian Alfred Smith and his co-worker Galen Black were fired as counselors from a drug rehabilitation agency for using peyote, a controlled substance under Oregon law, in a religious ceremony of the Native American Church. Both were subsequently denied unemployment benefits, which the State of Oregon claimed was permissible under its police powers and necessary in its effort to eradicate drug abuse. But Smith and Black argued that the denial of unemployment benefits constituted an infringement of their religious freedom and took their cases to court. Long traces the tortuous path that Smith followed as it went from state courts to the Supreme Court and then back again for a second round of hearings. A major event in Native American history, the case attracted widespread support for the Indian cause from a diverse array of religious groups eager to protect their own religious freedom. It also led to an intense tug-of-war between the Court and Congress, which fought back with amendments to the American Indian Religious Freedom Act (to protect the religious use of peyote) and the Religious Freedom Restoration Act of 1993, which protected religious freedom for all Americans. The Court subsequently ruled the latter act unconstitutional in Boerne v. Flores (1997). Long provides a lucid and balanced view of the competing sides in Smith. Drawing on interviews with Smith and his family, as well as with lawyers, judges, and congressional and group representatives involved in this struggle between Congress and Court, she takes the reader from the rituals of a peyote religious ceremony to the halls of government to reveal the conflicting interests that emerged in this key First Amendment case. She also clarifies how the Court reversed longstanding precedent by replacing the balancing test of compelling state interest and least restrictive means with a new reasonable basis argument that theoretically could be used to curtail religious practices well beyond those of the Native American church. Ultimately, the Supreme Court ruled that the First Amendment protection of religious freedom applies only to laws that specifically target religious behavior and that an individual's religious beliefs do not excuse one from complying with statutes that indirectly infringe on their religious rights. Engagingly written, Long's study highlights the resultant struggles, but without ever losing sight of the rich human dimensions of the story.