Claims as to the sacredness of lands, or features
of lands, as well as of objects, are increasingly part of the
discourse in environmental struggles. These claims are frequently
advanced by American Indian people, and by groups working in concert
with American Indian people, but they are also invoked by other
people and groups seeking to preserve or protect some specific
site or set of environmental values. Claims as to the sacredness
or spiritual significance of sites are also resisted, as is the
legitimacy of invoking sacredness as a consideration in environmental
decision making. These types of conflicts have important features
in common including some very elastic meanings as to sacredness,
and some specific constitutional restrictions on the use of criteria
of sacredness as a basis in decision making. But sacredness as
a decision making criterion keeps getting invoked through the
NEPA process (the requirement that environmental impact statements
be part of environmental decision making) and through other complicated
and fairly obscure legal requirements. The consequences of claims
as to sacredness are quite unclear, but seem to represent a source
of significant power for some native people on issues involving
resources. This paper considers the emerging experiences with
invoking sacred claims as part of environmental disputes. It considers
some ongoing struggles, with one particular focus on a highly
contested site in Georgia, where Creek Indians and some environmentalists
are trying to resist the construction of a highway across an archeological
and environmental site known as the Ocmulgee Oldfields.
Paul Friesema, Department
of Political Science, Northwestern University
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