Religious freedom

[A Peyote Ceremony Tipi used by members of the Native American Church]

Having thought that the US operated the twin principles of the separation of church from state and the freedom to belong to whatever church you pleased, I was puzzled to read this morning in the NYRB (reference 1) of the passage through the US Congress of the American Indian Religious Freedom Act in 1978. So I made my way to references 2 and 3, from which I learn something of what this is all about.

First, perhaps because until fairly recently there was a lot of free space, native religious practise in the US was very concerned with place and there were lots of sacred places, with many of those that are left being in what are now national parks or forests. The act expressed the principle that you couldn't just drive a logging road through a sacred site or build a dam that flooded a sacred site. 

Second, religious practise sometimes involved stuff that became illegal for other reasons. So a ritual might involve wearing the feathers of an endangered species of eagle. Or it might involve the consumption of a substance (particularly peyote) which had become recreational. I don't know what the act did about the the eagle, but it did make peyote legal if you were a native American. Which has perhaps spawned a legal industry devoted to ruling - for a fee - who is a native American and who is not. But I don't suppose it went so far as to legalise supply by non-native to natives.

Third, plenty of federal and state agencies were prone to interfere in matters of native religion, and generally to show a lack of respect. They were encouraged to refrain and desist.

All of which is fair enough, but I dare say there is plenty of abuse. Of for example, claiming a valuable bit of urban land as a sacred site until the developer coughs up reasonable compensation. From where I associate to the pain taken by developers in this country if they have the misfortune to stumble on some bit of buried heritage - when the temptation to keep schtum about it must be considerable.

PS: I also read that in the middle of the 19th century it was quite OK for whites to kill natives for sport or bounty, at least in the states of the southwest. From where I associate to 'Blood Meridian', a violent novel of said southwest by the recently deceased Cormac McCarthy, and to once being told of similar practises, rather more recent, in Australia.

References

Reference 1: Reclaiming the native identity in California - Ed Vulliamy, NYRB - 2023.

Reference 2: https://www.webpages.uidaho.edu/~rfrey/329airfa.htm.

Reference 3: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/American_Indian_Religious_Freedom_Act.