Saving Sacred Lands

Written by: Ava Springstun

            Imagine that you live in the most beautiful place on earth. Nature at it’s finest surrounds you for miles upon miles. Everything you could ever want or need is provided to you by the lands you call home. Now imagine that you meet a stranger traveling across your lands. You offer them their guest rights, food, shelter, water, and the kindness from your heart. You share with them the splendor of your home, leaving only the most private of places secret from them. This stranger grows to love your home as their own and before you know what’s happened, they’ve stolen it from you and marked it as off bounds for everyone not willing to pay for a day pass.

            While this could fit the criteria of almost every Native American tribe known to the US, this example is intended to represent the very National Parks we brag of. These incredible lands of unending beauty were once protected and cared for by the tribes that lived here long before the first colonists but are now the sights of campgrounds and visitor centers. Among these tragic stories is the hidden truth of the first national monument; the Black Hills.

            Three tribes designated these hills as sanctuaries; the Lakota, the Cheyenne and the Kiowa. Each had their own interpretation of these lands. What was undisputed was the belief that these crags and meadows were considered a part of their home. Each tribe had their own name for these sanctuaries and each in turn would face a great struggle of maintaining their rights to live among them. Places they once hunted and raised their families to respect were stolen away from them by the new colonists and the government they built. When they brought the issues to court, justifying their claim on the land as their home, they were offered a facade of peace or the threat of force.

            Courts ruled against the favor of the Natives in trials such as those with the U.S Court of Claims. The natives filed to regain their lands after the efforts of General Custer and President Ulysses S. Grant who bribed the tribes into submission with threats of starvation as an alternative. Theodore Roosevelt was another man who aided in this terrible act. Known for his exploits in trophy hunting, he saw the Black Hills as the perfect spot for America’s first national monument. His presidential ruling saw that the natives who once lived on the lands would be unable to step on them again. This is the case with many national parks. Greedy men sought to control the lands they found to be breathtaking for the purpose of preserving the natural splendor of the country their ancestors invaded. Treaties that were signed to keep the lands in the possession of the tribes that lived on them were ignored or completely thrown out, used only as a weak resolve to war and famine. Roads were soon built over trails, campgrounds housed thousands of outsiders each year, and soon the ways of the modern world had claimed the once untouched lands in the name of recreation. Those that once lived on the lands became part of the attraction. Displayed like animals in a zoo, the natives were forced to adapt to the new ways of the new world or collapse under its crushing influence. Even the very animals themselves, bison that were revered by the natives, soon fell to the prying eyes of the public, who left nothing untouched.

            In the more recent years, controversy and debates have plagued Yosemite National Park. The Ahwahnechee people who first inhabited the lands were driven from their homes by numerous wars. Appeals go unheard when the verdict plays in favor of anyone other than the natives. Native people aren’t given any leanancies when it comes to National Parks. They have no free entry and even though some National Parks were intended to be used as reservations, this could not withstand the brutality of the American courts. Their sacred lands are off limits to them while evidence of their lives exists all across the park. Their culture is deeply rooted into the lands they were displaced from with no way of replacing such a loss.

           The fight for reclaiming their lands and territories is not a new issue. It’s a widespread phenomena that plagues this nation. Activist efforts hosted around the nation from the prevention of pipelines to the reclamation of tribal lands are just the tip of the iceberg when it comes to the modern struggle of Native Americans. The deeply rooted struggle that overwhelms all others is the underlying fact that the history of such struggles and the modern colonialism the tribes face is often hidden away from the public eye. All around us is a hidden history that goes unnoticed generation after generation. National parks are just another undisclosed fact that won’t make the history books.

Sources

Nabokov, Peter. Where the Lightning Strikes: The Lives of American Indian Sacred Places. New York: Viking, 2006. Print.

Oatman-Stanford, Hunter. “From Yosemite to Bears Ears, Erasing Native Americans From U.S. National Parks.” Collectors Weekly, 26 Jan. 2018, www.collectorsweekly.com/articles/erasing-native-americans-from-national-parks/.