RT Article
T1 STORYTELLING AND THE HIGH COUNTRY: READING LYNG V. NORTHWEST INDIAN CEMETERY PROTECTIVE ASSOCIATION (1988)
JF Journal of law and religion
VO 36
IS 2
SP 181
OP 201
A1 Lloyd, Dana
LA English
YR 2021
UL https://ixtheo.de/Record/1806875241
AB In Lyng v. Northwest Indian Cemetery Protective Association, 485 U.S. 439 (1988), the Supreme Court declared constitutional the Forest Service's development plan in an area of the Six Rivers National Forest (known as the High Country) that is central to the religious practice of the Yurok, Karuk, and Tolowa Nations. The Court admitted that "[i]t is undisputed that the Indian respondents’ beliefs are sincere and that the Government's proposed actions will have severe adverse effects on the practice of their religion" (447). Nevertheless, because the disputed area was on public land, the Court thought that the government should be allowed to manage its property in any way it saw fit, regardless of the severe adverse effects on the religious practice of the local Indigenous nations. In this article, I read materials from the trial that led to the Lyng decision, focusing on the Indigenous witnesses and their testimony that has been largely ignored in the Lyng decision. The U.S. legal framework of free exercise does not allow the courts to fully consider the stories told by the Indigenous witnesses in trial. A law-and-literature approach allows me, though, to tell a different story about the High Country, one that centers Indigenous knowledge and sovereignty.
K1 Indigenous law
K1 Indigenous Religion
K1 Karuk
K1 Native American religious freedom
K1 Tolowa
K1 Yurok
K1 Law and literature
K1 Sacred Sites
K1 Settler Colonialism
DO 10.1017/jlr.2021.28