Native American Religious Freedom beyond the First Amendment

FAIN: FT-254559-17

Michael David McNally
Carleton College (Northfield, MN 55057-4001)

Writing a book on the role of Native American religious traditions in legal debates over religious freedom.

The category of "religion" as it has come to be defined in the law has had mixed results for Native American communities who have strategically appealed to the legal/political discourse of "religious freedom" to protect sacred places, practices, knowledge, objects, and ancestral remains that are not easily assimilated into modern Western senses of "religion." In turn, those communities have articulated such arguably "religious" claims in other legal and political discourses: cultural property, historic preservation and environmental law, treaty-based federal Indian law, and indigenous rights in international human rights law. The book to be completed under the grant, Native American Religious Freedom Beyond the First Amendment, explores these Native American claims, and the various legal discourses of their articulation, to inform contemporary discussions about religious freedom, the cultural history of the category of religion, and the vitality of indigenous religions in today's world.

Associated Products

Defend the Sacred: Native American Religious Freedom beyond the First Amendment (Book)
Title: Defend the Sacred: Native American Religious Freedom beyond the First Amendment
Author: Michael D. McNally
Abstract: 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.
Year: 2020
Primary URL: http://www.worldcat.org/oclc/1137752396
Primary URL Description: WorldCat entry
Secondary URL: https://press.princeton.edu/books/paperback/9780691190907/defend-the-sacred
Secondary URL Description: Publisher entry
Publisher: Princeton University Press
Type: Single author monograph
ISBN: 9780691190907
Copy sent to NEH?: No

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