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Defend the Sacred: Native American Religious Freedom Beyond the First Amendment
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.
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.
- GenresNonfictionReligion
360 pages, Paperback
Published April 14, 2020
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Displaying 1 - 3 of 3 reviews
January 6, 2024
Read everything except chapter 5. Informative! I would still love to see a Native-authored text on Native American religions and relation to US law.
September 1, 2025
A birds eye view of the different approaches Native Americans have used to defend their right to the sacred in U.S. Courts. Further comments later.
April 8, 2024
WOW! This book is incredibly dense but written so in a way that is still accessible, just completely amazing in its pace. Is super foundational for my thesis so shoutout McNally for doing a lot of leg work to make my life so much easier and these concepts so much easier to understand!
Displaying 1 - 3 of 3 reviews