Don't Know Much About Mythology - Kenneth C. Davis [239]
The Devil’s Tower controversy is a case in point. On one side of the standoff are Wyoming state officials, the National Parks Service—and rock climbers—who stand for tourism and recreation. On the other side of the argument are the Native Americans who revere Bear’s Lodge as a sacred place and want to restore its native name. Writing about this landmark in Sacred Lands of Indian America, historian Jake Page points out that “in its presence it is easy to understand why climbers are drawn to it. Easy enough to understand if you are not an Indian. For Indians, climbing the tower is an invasion of the sacred. One has to wonder what it would feel like to Christians if the steeples of churches and cathedrals suddenly became climbing destinations.”
The fight over Devil’s Tower, like the conflict over the construction of a large telescope near Tucson, Arizona, on Mount Graham, a mountain sacred to the Apaches, pits powerful economic interests against ancient tribal traditions. It is a fight being waged in various places around America, as development projects with a variety of purposes, including ski resorts, new highways running through reservations, and mineral rights, proliferate. These enterprises often collide headfirst with Native American sacred spaces that, to the uninformed, seem like open land or wilderness, completely suitable for modern development.
In other words, the myths—the sacred stories—of the people who have been in America longest are crashing headfirst against the desires and wishes of the federal government, science, developers, and, yes, rock climbers. These controversies have embroiled U.S. courts and Congress during the past decade in a face-off between native beliefs and government control.
In 1990, for instance, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that states could regulate Native American religions that employed the use of peyote, a natural hallucinogen. In a majority opinion, Justice Antonin Scalia wrote, “It may be fairly said that leaving accommodation to the political process will place at a relative disadvantage those religious practices that are not widely engaged in; but that unavoidable consequence of democratic government must be preferred.” (Emphasis added.) Scalia’s opinion meant Congress—or other government bodies—can pass laws that regulate religious expression. The First Amendment, it would seem, goes only so far.*
Seeing the danger to religious expression posed by the decision and Scalia’s opinion, many mainstream religious groups and other civil rights groups asked the court to reconsider, but their petition was denied. In response, Congress passed the Religious Freedom Restoration Act (RFRA) in 1993, and the American Indian Religious Freedom Act Amendments in 1994, which restored a measure of protection for Native American religions, including the use of peyote in traditional sacraments. In 1997, the Supreme Court declared RFRA unconstitutional. The court ruled that Congress had overstepped its power to legislate constitutional rights when it passed a law attempting to protect religious observances from government regulation. (Peyote use for religious ceremonies was unaffected by the decision.)
Congress had also stepped into controversial territory when it passed the Native American Graves Protection and Repatriation Act (NAGPRA), signed into law by President George Bush in 1990. Designed to protect American Indian grave sites from looting and archaeological investigation, NAGPRA also required museums to repatriate certain