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Defend the Sacred: Native American Religious Freedom beyond the First Amendment - Paperback | Diverse Reads

Defend the Sacred: Native American Religious Freedom beyond the First Amendment

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The remarkable story of the innovative legal strategies Native Americans have used to protect their religious rights

From North Dakota's Standing Rock encampments to Arizona's San Francisco Peaks, Native Americans have repeatedly asserted legal rights to religious freedom to protect their sacred places, practices, objects, knowledge, and ancestral remains. But these claims have met with little success in court because Native American communal traditions don't fit easily into modern Western definitions of religion. In Defend the Sacred, Michael McNally explores how, in response to this situation, Native peoples have creatively turned to other legal means to safeguard what matters to them.

To articulate their claims, Native peoples have resourcefully used the languages of cultural resources under environmental and historic preservation law; of sovereignty under treaty-based federal Indian law; and, increasingly, of Indigenous rights under international human rights law. Along the way, Native nations still draw on the rhetorical power of religious freedom to gain legislative and regulatory successes beyond the First Amendment.

The story of Native American advocates and their struggle to protect their liberties, Defend the Sacred casts new light on discussions of religious freedom, cultural resource management, and the vitality of Indigenous religions today.

ISBN-13: 9780691190907

Media Type: Paperback

Publisher: Princeton University Press

Publication Date: 04-14-2020

Pages: 400

Product Dimensions: 6.10(w) x 9.20(h) x 1.10(d)

Michael D. McNally is the John M. and Elizabeth W. Musser Professor of Religious Studies at Carleton College. He is the author of Honoring Elders: Aging, Authority, and Ojibwe Religion and Ojibwe Singers: Hymns, Grief, and a Native Culture in Motion. Twitter @mcnallymichaeld

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From the Publisher

"An important book on Native American activism from a scholar of religion who has also delved deeply into law and Native history and social life."—Sally Engle Merry, New York University

Table of Contents

List of Illustrations ix

Abbreviations xi

Preface and Acknowledgments xv

Introduction 1

1 Religion as Weapon: The Civilization Regulations, 1883-1934 33

2 Religion as Spirituality: Native Religions in Prison 69

3 Religion as Spirituality: Sacred Lands 94

4 Religion as Cultural Resource: Environmental and Historic Preservation Law 127

5 Religion as Collective Right: Legislating toward Native American Religious Freedom 171

6 Religion as Collective Right: Repatriation and Access to Eagle Feathers 196

7 Religion as Peoplehood: Sovereignty and Treaties in Federal Indian Law 224

8 Religion as Peoplehood: Indigenous Rights in International Law 259

9 Conclusion 295

Notes 307

Bibliography 351

Index 361