Sacred Site Reports

The greater Bears Ears area encompasses more than 1.9 million acres and is saturated with geological, cultural, spiritual, ecological, and archaeological diversity. Located in the southeastern corner of the land commonly known as the state of Utah, the region is defined by two 8,000-foot mountain buttes that rise above the landscape, twin plateaus resembling the ears of a large bear peeking over the northern horizon. The Hopi Tribe calls this land Hoon’Naqvut; for the Navajo, it is known as Shash Jaa’. For the Ute Tribe it is Kwiyagatu Nukavachiand for the Pueblo of Zuni, Ansh An Lashokdiwe. In each language it is “Bears Ears.”

The Greater Chaco Canyon area is a significant historical, archaeological and sacred site in northwest New Mexico. From the 9th to the 11th century, it was the center of the Pueblo civilization, and was comprised of dense apartment-like structures (pueblos), roads and plazas. The site is considered sacred to multiple Native American tribes and has been listed as a UNESCO World Heritage Site since 1987.

The Back Forty Mine is a proposed open pit metallic sulfide mine that would sit 100 feet from the banks of the sacred Menominee River in Lake Township, Michigan. The project is backed by Canadian development company Aquila Resources and if it proceeds, will threaten the water security of the millions who rely on Lake Michigan.

Arizona’s sacred Oak Flat is threatened with mining by a multinational corporation.

Where the life-giving Rio Grande enters the Gulf of Mexico south of Port Isabel, Texas, you might expect to find land sacred to Native Americans, and indeed, the Garcia Pasture has burials, discrete shell working areas, and contact period artifacts of the Esto’k Gna, the Carrizo/Comecrudo Tribe of Texas. Garcia Pasture is considered one of the premier prehistoric archaeological sites in Cameron County by the National Park Service and is listed on the National Register of Historic Places.

Juristac lies at the heart of the ancestral lands of the Amah Mutsun Tribal Band near Gilroy, California. For thousands of years, the Mutsun’s ancestors lived and held sacred ceremonies at this location in the southern foothills of the Santa Cruz Mountains, above the confluence of the Pajaro and San Benito rivers.

Weatherman Draw in southcentral Montana is a valley that contains the largest collection of Native American rock art on the continent.

Woodruff Butte is a volcanic cinder cone that is known as Tsimontukwi to the Hopi. It is one of nine major pilgrimage shrines that encircle Hopi traditional territory, and was for many years the site of nine clan shrines, until eight were destroyed by mining.

While many threats to sacred places come from natural-resource extraction and development, a different sort of battle continues in Wyoming, at a place the Lakota call Mato Tipila (The Lodge of the Bear), better known as Devils Tower.

The Supreme Court case known as G-O Road set an extremely damaging precedent regarding legal protection of Native American sacred sites on federal land.

Pipestone National Monument, located in southwest Minnesota, is named for the red stone (catlinite) that has been quarried there for centuries by native people, including the Lakota, Dakota and Yankton Sioux, to make ceremonial pipes.

The upper Missouri River ran freely through Montana, North Dakota and South Dakota until six massive dam and reservoir projects were built during the second half of the twentieth century.

The Mattaponi River, considered by the Mattaponi Tribe in Virginia to be the place where life begins, will be impacted by a proposed reservoir and dam project that will pump water from the river and could damage its ecosystem.

Nowhere north of the Valley of Mexico is there a more robust expression of prehistoric Native American culture and religion than in the ceremonial mound complexes of the Mississippian culture.

The Wolf River, its watershed, and the surrounding hill country have been used by generations of Sokaogon peoples for activities that pass on traditions and sustain their community’s identity. These activities include religious observances at Popple Pond and Oak Lake and gathering pure water from springs for use in water ceremonies.

Construction of an astronomical observatory threatens the integrity of Mount Graham, Ariz., sacred to the San Carlos and White Mountain Apache. This ironic conflict pits the Vatican against Apache spiritual leaders, and astronomers against biologists.

Sixty miles south of the Zuni Pueblo in New Mexico lies Salt Lake, home of the Zuni’s Salt Mother deity. When water evaporates in the summer, it leaves a layer of salt on the lake bottom, which is harvested by pilgrims, including medicine men coming from Zuni and other neighboring tribes.

The Black Hills stretch across western South Dakota, northeast Wyoming and southeast Montana and constitute a sacred landscape for the Lakota, Northern Cheyenne and Omaha.

A world-famous natural bridge located at the northern edge of the Dine (Navajo) Nation, Rainbow Bridge is the site of hundreds of thousands of tourist visits every year and is recognized as a National Monument.

Snoqualmie Falls, 30 miles east of Seattle, Washington, is sacred to the Snoqualmie Tribe of the Puget Sound region. They believe it is the place where First Woman and First Man were created by Moon the Transformer, himself the son of an Indian woman and a star.

The wetlands around Lawrence, in eastern Kansas, hold over a hundred years of memories of Native children forced to grow up in isolation from their families and cultures. These memories bear their traces in unmarked child graves and a medicine wheel erected by contemporary Haskell students.

What was once Quechan land is now prime gold mining territory, and the off-reservation sacred landscape around Indian Pass in the California desert is endangered.

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.

In the vast and rocky Mojave Desert of Southern California, Ward Valley is sacred land for the five lower Colorado River Indian tribes, and critical habitat for the endangered—and traditionally revered—desert tortoise Gopherus agassizii.

From many places in northern Arizona, the horizon is dramatically marked by three 12,000-foot volcanic peaks that rise out of the Colorado Plateau south of the Grand Canyon and north of Flagstaff.

In 2000, California’s water wars entered a new phase with an ambitious plan called the CALFED Bay-Delta Program. Included in the plan was the proposal to raise Shasta Dam, on the McCloud River

To the native tribes living along the Klamath River in Oregon and California, the river and its fish — especially salmon — are sacred, and stewardship of these natural resources is a core spiritual practice.

Often called “the world’s longest art gallery,” Nine Mile Canyon in Utah contains over 10,000 petroglyphs, pictographs and archaeological sites left by the Archaic, Fremont and Ute people thousands of years ago.

The mound temples and historic villages of the Muscogee people, descended from the Mississippian culture, in the Ocmulgee Old Fields of Georgia have been subject to development intrusions since the 1700s.

Perhaps the most high-profile endangered sacred place in North America is Alaska’s Arctic National Wildlife Refuge — however, it is not widely identified as sacred.

Mount Tenabo and its environs are part of Newe Sogobia, the ancestral land of the Western Shoshone, which has never been legally ceded to the federal government. Nevertheless, U.S. politicians and multinational corporations have ignored an 1863 federal treaty acknowledging Western Shoshone ownership of the land

The Sutter Buttes of Northern California’s Sacramento Valley are where life began and where life ends. Playing a role in the traditional creation and afterlife stories of the Maidu and Wintun peoples, this small mountain range was a place of ritual for their ancestors, who once lived within view of the Buttes.

For more than two decades, the Shoshone and Paiute peoples, scientists, environmentalists, the federal government, Nevada citizens and politicians have wrestled over the fate of Yucca Mountain.

The conflict surrounding the estimated 24,000 petroglyphs — ancient carved rock images — west of Albuquerque, N.M., demonstrates that even a national monument is not safe when it comes to suburban development.

In December 2001, a federal judge ruled in favor of a Historic Preservation Plan that protects the Bighorn Medicine Wheel and Medicine Mountain in Wyoming, a site considered sacred to Native Americans. A Wyoming timber company had challenged the plan, which was negotiated with tribal organizations, state and local governments, as a hindrance to logging.

Hidden in the mountains of northern New Mexico lies Blue Lake, or Ba Whyea, an ancient sacred site for the Taos Pueblo community. After the U.S. government appropriated Blue Lake and the surrounding area and placed it under the control of the Forest Service, the ensuing battles for Blue Lake

The Bay Area’s oldest shellmound at Huichin, now Berkeley, was a massive burial site

For decades, the sacred Hawaiian island of Kahoʻolawe, the physical incarnation of the sea god Kanaloa, was wracked by explosions set off by the U.S. Navy. Native Hawaiians demanded an end to the military assault, and in 1976 activists occupied the island, making headlines across the country.

For decades, the sacred Hawaiian island of Kahoʻolawe, the physical incarnation of the sea god Kanaloa, was wracked by explosions set off by the U.S. Navy. Native Hawaiians demanded an end to the military assault, and in 1976 activists occupied the island, making headlines across the country.

The holy site or wahi pana of Haleakala Crater is known to native Hawaiians as the “House of the Sun.” Located on the southeastern reach of Maui, the second largest of the Hawaiian Islands, the sacred crater and summit are where ancient priests or na Kahuna Po‘o have received spiritual wisdom and practiced meditation for over 1,000 years.

Mauna Kea, a volcano on the island of Hawai‘i, is sacred to Native Hawaiians as an elder ancestor and the physical embodiment—or kinolau—of deities revered in Hawaiian culture and religion.Mauna Kea, a volcano on the island of Hawai‘i, is sacred to Native Hawaiians as an elder ancestor and the physical embodiment—or kinolau—of deities revered in Hawaiian culture and religion.

Every day for 35 years, 3.3 million gallons of groundwater were pumped from the Navajo aquifer, which flows beneath the Hopi and Navajo nations in Arizona, to transport coal via pipeline from a strip mine on Black Mesa.

Medicine Lake Volcanic Highlands, in the mountains of northern California, has a natural healing energy that the Native people in the area have long recognized. Corporations sense a different