Feds establish religion on 'sacred' Indian site

Despite Court Rulings Against Prayer

What is it that federal officials may do on public lands in Wyoming that high school officials may not do on school grounds in Texas? The answer: support religion! At least that is the situation following the ruling of the U.S. Supreme Court on June 19, 2000, in Santa Fe Independent School District v. Jane Doe, et al.

In Santa Fe, in a 6-3 ruling, the court struck down student-led prayer at high school football games in a tiny Texas town, ruling that the prayer sends a "message to members of the audience who are nonadherants `that they are outsiders, not full members of the political community, and an accompanying message to adherents that they are insiders, favored members of the political community.' "

The court rejected the school district's argument that the prayer is voluntary, declaring, "What to most believers may seem nothing more than a reasonable request that the nonbeliever respect their religious practices, [in this] context may appear to the nonbeliever or dissenter to be an attempt to employ the machinery of the [government] to enforce a religious orthodoxy."

Respect Demanded For Devils Tower

Ironically, the Supreme Court issued its decision just before the National Park Service (NPS) bragged that it had achieved an 80% compliance rate with its demand that all visitors to Devils Tower National Monument in Wyoming "respect" Native American religion.

The NPS policy was adopted in 1995 in response to the demand by Native American groups that, because Devils Tower is "sacred," visitors must be barred from climbing. That policy has a simple and straightforward objective: All visitors "will show respect" for Native American religion.

Thus federal officials in Wyoming are now doing what the Supreme Court has ruled that high school officials in Texas may not do, "enforce a religious orthodoxy."

In fact, the words of the Supreme Court in the Santa Fe case are even more applicable to the NPS action at Devils Tower: "The realities of the situation plainly reveal that [the school's] policy involved both perceived and actual endorsement of religion" because the prayer was delivered at a "school sponsored function conducted on school property [and was] broadcast over the school public address system, which remains subject to the control of school officials."

The "realities of the situation" at Devils Tower reveal an even more direct and heavyhanded effort to force the public, not only to acknowledge that Devils Tower is "sacred," but also to modify its behavior at the federal site to show its "respect" for that religion.

The NPS has a major nationwide campaign, conducted through its official website, press releases, and numerous interviews, to ensure compliance.

In fact, would-be climbers who approach Devils Tower during June, are advised by uniformed and armed NPS officials that the NPS opposes climbing during Native Americans' June holy days.

Devils Tower is not the only federal site where the Clinton Administration enforces Native American religion by barring the use of public lands. At the Santa Fe Ski Area in New Mexico, federal officials barred the expansion of the ski area, declaring that the national forest lands are "sacred."

Rainbow Bridge National Arch

In the Bighorn National Forest in northern Wyoming, all of Medicine Mountain and other areas have been declared off limits to economic activity because they must be managed as a "sacred site[s]." In Montana, three quarters of a million acres of federal land have been declared off-limits to oil and gas exploration because of assertions that large areas of the Lewis and Clark National Forest are "sacred."

And in Utah, visitors to the Rainbow Bridge National Arch are barred, by NPS officials, from walking beneath the Arch because it is "sacred."

Thus while federal courts, including the U.S. Supreme Court, strike down the most attenuated involvement by state officials in the religious lives of their citizens, the open and notorious involvement by federal officials in enforcing religion on federal lands continues.

Mr. Pendley is president and chief legal officer of the Mountain States Legal Foundation, under whose auspices this article was prepared.

Copyright Human Events Publishing, Inc. Jul 28, 2000
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