NativeReligions.org explores efforts by various Native American nations and organizations to protect sacred places, practices, ancestral remains, and sacred “objects” in museums. Case studies are put in historical and legal context to those Native struggles, providing the public with balanced information vetted by scholars on contested sacred places and related issues of Native American religious freedom and cultural sovereignty. NativeReligions.org also applies to each case study the relevant provisions of the U.N. Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples (2007, adopted by U.S. 2010) to each case study in terms of its clarification of norms and standards of standing international human rights law.
NativeReligions.org has been supported through Carleton College’s Mellon Public Works Initiative. Prof. Michael McNally, Musser Professor of Religion, Carleton College is the project director. Student research contributors include Palina Buchanan ’22, Ellie Zimmerman ’21, and students in RELG243 Native American Religious Freedom. A fuller list of acknowledgments is forthcoming.
