New Threats to Sacred Sites and Religious Property

Abstract

Over the last 40 years, Native American faith communities have struggled to protect their sacred sites using religious liberty law. Because Native American religious claimants lack an explicit ownership interest in their sacred sites, courts can—and do, consistently—decide in favour of the government as landowner, regardless of anticipated or actual burdens on Indians’ free exercise of religion. In cases involving religious property, competing notions of ownership can enable, or inhibit, religious practice. New threats to Native American sacred sites often follow valuable natural resources that lie above, below, and around tribes’ ancestral lands. Even where faith communities own their sacred sites, religious liberty protections may prove limited. Courts often make judgments about religious property based on their own determinations of what counts as ‘essential’ for faith communities’ free exercise of religion. How legal institutions comprehend religion when evaluating property claims brought by faith communities will often dictate whether, and how extensively, religious liberty protects religious property. Such judicial theologizing can further threaten sacred sites.