The U.S. government has always valued religious freedom. The freedom to worship is a right that is basic to our national life and history. Ironically, however, the colonizers who first came to North America to escape religious persecution routinely violated the religious freedom of the continent's native people. This practice devastated Native American communities, whose strong religious beliefs underlay all aspects of their lives and cultures. European colonizers perceived native cultures as barbaric and godless, and therefore felt justified in condemning and destroying them.
The denial of Indian religious liberty arose from the clash of European and Native American worldviews. Christian colonizers evaluated Indian religions from the perspective of their own particular faiths. They searched for sacred texts, written histories, and church institutions in Indian societies, and were appalled when tribal religions did not display these characteristics. Because the colonizers failed to recognize the complexity, diversity, and richness of native religions, they intruded upon Indian religious rights without feeling any guilt or self-doubt.
In colonial America, Christianity and Western civilization were intertwined, and when these concepts were imposed upon native people the process was called "education." In colonial Indian schools, civic and religious leaders were the Indians' overseers, and they continually undermined tribal religions and prohibited their practice. Christian Indian "praying" towns, established by John Eliot in 1646, segregated natives from both frontiersmen and non-Christian tribal members, forcing native residents to completely repudiate their culture and traditional ways of worship.
Nineteenth-century Americans expected the federal government to follow the colonial tradition of suppressing tribal religions, and thus to "civilize" native people. Through the Civilization Act of 1819, the government agreed to subsidize missionaries in their civilizing efforts and to support the active destruction of native religions. In 1870 President Grant's "Peace Policy" expanded this federal support by inviting Christian denominations to nominate people to serve as federal agents to the tribes. Under this policy entire Indian nations were placed under the administrative control of particular churches, many of which had had no previous contact with the tribes they were selected to oversee. President Grant's own denomination, the Methodists, received the "rights" to several agencies.
Government persecution of native religions accelerated in the late nineteenth century. U.S. forces killed Sioux Ghost Dance participants at Wounded Knee, South Dakota, in 1890, and two years later arrested Ghost Dance leaders in Oklahoma. On most reservations the federal Indian Office's Courts of Indian Offenses investigated, convicted, and punished natives who persisted in following their ancient tribal religions. The Sun Dance, for example, which had long sustained a variety of Plains groups, was deemed offensive and was banned.
At the turn of the twentieth century many museums—operating on the assumption that native people were "vanishing"—began gathering ceremonial and secular objects for their collections. As a result, many museums have in their collections objects from the Ghost Dance, the Sun Dance, and other tribal religions, despite the fact that the rightful owners of these objects continue to hold them sacred, and need them for religious practices.
Infringements upon Indian religious traditions continued well into the twentieth century. Even as late as 1921, the Office of Indian Affairs issued Circular 1665, with a supplement, to all reservation superintendents. The circular banned native ceremonies and traditional rites, and encouraged missionaries and government officials to turn the public against Indian dances. However, Indian people continued their formal ways of worship surreptitiously.
It was not until the passage of the Indian Reorganization Act in 1934 that restrictions against native religions ended. With a vigorous movement toward Indian reform, a new era of understanding and acceptance of Indian culture and religion permeated Indian policies. This change, however, was short-lived. The nation's misconception of native religions resurfaced after World War II with the implementation of the federal government's termination and relocation policies, which aimed at completely integrating Indians into American society. These policies resulted in the loss of sacred lands and the destruction of native cultures; reservation lands no longer had federal status, and Indians were removed from the reservations and placed in urban areas.
A brief revival of native religious acceptance occurred, however, in the tumultuous sixties when Americans shifted their moral and religious attitudes in response to the Vietnam War and domestic unrest. As Americans groped for a broader religious understanding of the world, many sought answers in native religions. However, attitudes and policies became unstable in later years.
In the seventies, concern for the preservation of endangered species and fear of Indian religious revivals led to the arrest of traditional Indians for possession of sacred objects such as eagle feathers, and to criminal prosecutions of individuals for using peyote. Government agents also denied tribal members access to sacred sites on public lands and interfered with religious ceremonies they deemed "criminal." These confrontations produced Indian protests that culminated in the 1978 Congressional hearings on American Indian religious freedom.
Those hearings documented three specific types of infringements on Indian religious rights: the disruption of ceremonies and traditional rites; the seizure of ceremonial objects (sacred objects, including those that museums possessed); and the denial of access to sacred sites. In response, Congress concluded that native ways of worship were an integral part of Indian life, acknowledging in the process that many federal statutes, regulations, and enforcement policies infringed upon native religious liberties. That same year Congress passed the American Indian Religious Freedom Act (AIRFA), which promised to protect and preserve American Indian religious liberties.
AIRFA was applauded as a reversal of the antagonistic policies toward Indian religions that had been in force for so long. Unfortunately, however, the statute has proved to be "toothless": its provisions are vague, and enforcement procedures are virtually nonexistent.
Congress's intent to protect American Indian religious freedom has been further distorted in recent years by two landmark U.S. Supreme Court cases. In 1988, in Lynq v. Northwest Cemetery Protection Association, the high court limited a tribe's ability to protect aboriginal sacred sites on federal land; and in 1990, in Smith v. Oregon Department of Human Resources, the justices decided that the First Amendment's free exercise of religion clause did not protect the sacramental use of peyote in religious services of the Native American Church. In Smith the court further concluded that if the Indians' "minority religion" deserved legal protection, it would have to win that protection in the state legislatures.
Native people have responded to the Smith and Lynq decisions by proposing new legislation that would strengthen AIRFA. Their proposal charges federal authorities with protecting Native American sacred sites, defending the religious use of peyote in Native American Church services, securing the religious rights of Native American prisoners, and streamlining federal permit systems to allow for the religious use of eagle feathers. Further, any government proposal that might threaten native religious freedom would have to pass the "compelling state interest test" (discarded by the Supreme Court in Smith) before it could become law.
In the past five hundred years Indians have fought many battles, both to defend their right to worship and to have their religions be accepted by the Christians who live among them. Unfortunately, however, Indian religions have been actively hindered or only partially protected. Nevertheless, irrespective of this sad history of governmental insensitivity, the struggle for Indian religious freedom continues, fueled by a belief that the defense of religious liberty will ensure the preservation of all ways of life.
See also
Ghost Dance;
Missions and Missionaries;
Native American Church;
Peace Policy;
Religion.
Peggy V. Beck and Anna L. Walters, The Sacred: Ways of Knowledge, Sources of Life (Tsaile, Ariz.: Navajo Community Press, 1977); Christopher Vecsey, ed., Handbook of American Indian Religious Freedom (New York: Crossroad Publishing, 1991).
Irene S. Vernon
Mescalero Apache/Yaqui
Colorado State University
