Defend the Sacred: Native American Religious Freedom beyond the First Amendment

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. 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. In this presentation, which draws on his recently published book Defend the Sacred: Native American Religious Freedom beyond the First Amendment (Princeton University Press, 2020) and article Native American Religious Freedom as a Collective Right (BYU Law Review, 2019), Michael McNally will discuss how Native peoples have creatively turned to other legal means to safeguard what matters to them. McNally’s recently published book Defend the Sacred, on which this lecture is based, is now for sale with special offer code DTS-FG for 30% off with free shipping via the Princeton University Press website through Oct., 31, 2020. Michael D. McNally (Carleton, B.A.; Harvard Univ., M.Div., M.A., Ph.D.) is the John M. and Elizabeth W. Musser Professor of Religion at Carleton College. A 2017-18 Guggenheim Fellow, he is author of Defend the Sacred: Native American Religious Freedom beyond the First Amendment (Princeton University Press, 2020), Honoring Elders: Aging, Authority, and Ojibwe Religion (Columbia University Press, 2009), and Ojibwe Singers: Hymns, Grief, and a Native Culture in Motion (Oxford University Press, 2000, MN Historical Society Press, 2009), and a number of book chapters, journal articles, and law review articles. Dr. Barbara McGraw is the Director of the Center for Engaged Religious Pluralism in the School of Liberal Arts and Professor of Social Ethics, Law, and Public Life in the School of Economics and Business Administration, both at Saint Mary’s College of California in Moraga, CA. Her areas of expertise include religion and the law, public policy and social issues, religious pluralism in American Public Life, religion in prison, and cross-cultural interfaith leadership. Prior to earning a Ph.D. in religion and social ethics from the University of Southern California and becoming an academic, Barbara was an attorney with the international law firm Skadden Arps. Sponsored & Organized by: Jay Phillips Center for Interreligious Studies at the University of St. Thomas Co-sponsored by: Terrence J. Murphy Institute at the University of St. Thomas Jay Phillips Center for Interfaith Learning at Saint John\u27s University (Collegeville, MN) In collaboration with: Center for Engaged Religious Pluralism at Saint Mary\u27s College of California (Moraga, CA) Center for the Study of Religion, Culture and Society at Elon University (Elon, North Carolina) CAS SOLV Initiative: Cultivating an Educational and Institutional Relationship Between Dakota Communities and the University of St. Thomas Forum on Faith and Life at Concordia College (Moorhead, MN) With generous support from: Jay and Rose Phillips Family Foundation of Minnesota To make an accessibility request, call Disability Resources at (651) 962-6315