The cluster of islands off the coast of the West African nation of Guinea-Bissau—the Bijagós archipelago—are a semitropical land with abundant flora, fauna and natural resources. Despite centuries of slave trading and colonial oppression, the ethnic Bijagós people have remained fiercely independent
Sitting in the lush central mountain range of Puerto Rico (Borike), the ancestral home of the Boriken Taíno people, Caguana is the largest and most complex ceremonial site in the West Indies. Caguana Ceremonial Center consists of a large central plaza, a ceremonial dance area, 10 rectangular earth-and-stone–lined ball courts and plazas and one circular plaza
The Badger-Two Medicine Roadless Area sits on National Forest land within the Rocky Mountain Front. Adjacent to the Blackfeet Reservation in Montana, Badger-Two Medicine is a dramatic landscape where the plains, the mountains, and two rivers meet.
On the island of Hawaii, the remote rainforest Wao Kele on the slopes of Kilauea is the home of the volcano goddess Pele and her ʻohana (family) of deities, an ancient hunting ground that continues to be a place of ceremony for Native Hawaiians today.
The remnant of an ancient volcano, Cave Rock is home to the spirits of the Washoe people, whose ancestral land encompassed the Lake Tahoe Basin. They no longer have domain over their sacred place; instead it is managed by the Forest Service, which permits recreational use in violation of Washoe beliefs.
Imagine a lake as vast as the sea and as deep as a canyon, endowed with an abundance of unique flora and fauna. This is Russia’s Lake Baikal — the world’s oldest and deepest lake — situated in southeast Siberia, near the border with Mongolia.
The “spiny forests” of southern Madagascar are like no other forests on Earth: unique desert-adapted plants like the prickly stalked didierea form a dense thicket of flora that curls around the perimeter of this island off the southeast coast of Africa.
Klabona, the Sacred Headwaters of the Stikine, Skeena, and Nass rivers, is an area of unparalleled cultural importance in northwest British Columbia.
The historic pilgrimage route to the Cathedral of Santiago de Compostela in northwestern Spain—known as the Camino de Santiago, or Way of St. James—is the oldest and longest living pilgrimage route in Europe.
On Oct. 9, 2006, a baby born in Vallican, British Columbia, an ancient village and burial ground of the Sinixt Nation, made tribal history. Agnice Sophia Campbell was the first Sinixt (pronounced sin-eyekst) descendant born in traditional tribal territory in nearly 100 years.