The 5,642-foot-high mountain known as Avi Kwa Ame in the Mojave language is the creation site for ten Yuman-speaking tribes including the Fort Mojave Indian Tribe. In response to more than a decade of efforts to protect the site, President Biden has designated 450,000 acres in Nevada as the “Avi Kwa Ame National Monument,” only the second monument to protect Native history.
Tomales Point and Point Reyes, the Farallon Islands and the West Berkeley Shellmound, all in northern California’s Bay Area, are sacred places. Their entirety forms an immense ceremonial and mortuary complex for the Coast Miwok and Ohlone, indigenous to the San Francisco Bay Area. These coastal sites are evidence of early Polynesian settlement in the Americas.
In May 2020, while clearing the way for a mine expansion, the transnational mining company Rio Tinto set off explosives that destroyed a site sacred to the Puutu Kunti Kurrama and Pinikura people in Western Australia. The site included the Juukan Gorge Rock Dwellings, which have evidence of human habitation dating back 46,000 years. The mining company placed their explosives meters from the rock shelters with full permission of the Australian government—and after misleading Traditional Owners.
Centuries of industrial waste and sewage rapidly have poured into Onondaga Lake, destroying its ecosystem. It was designated a Superfund site in 1994 beginning efforts to clean it up. But there is a long way to go and the Onandaga want to see it returned to a fishable, swimmable state.
Trump’s U.S.–Mexico border wall threatens multiple sacred sites of the Tohono O’odham Nation in Arizona, including the sacred Quitobaquito Springs and burial and ceremonial grounds on what is known as Monument Hill in Organ Pipe Cactus National Monument.
When Soviet forces forcibly relocated the Yaghnobi from their mountain valley in what is now Tajikistan, the Russians were unable to crush the spirit of the people. Their cultural lifeblood remained in their homeland and they returned to create the Yaghnob National Natural Park to protect their ancient cultural landscape.
Minnesota, known as Mni Sota Makoce to the Dakota, is “the land where the waters reflect the skies.” The Dakota word Bdote means “where two waters come together,” representing the spiritual and physical place of creation for the Dakota people.
Known for its towering stone statues, the island of Rapa Nui holds immense cultural value to its native clans. With more than 100,000 visitors annually, tourism threatens the traditional rights of native people to own land and protect their sacred sites, including more than 900 moai statues, burial sites and ceremonial grounds.
The indigenous U’wa who live in the foothills and forests of northeast Colombia’s Andes perpetuate all life by protecting it. The U’wa believe that their homeland is where the world began, and that everything—land, trees, river and sky—is alive and therefore sacred.
The Lascaux Cave is one of 25 caves from the Palaeolithic period located in the Vézère Valley—part of the Nouvelle-Aquitaine region in southwestern France. Inside the cave, Upper Palaeolithic occupation (dated between 28,000 BC and 10,000 BC) is evidenced by the presence of 6,000 painted figures—of which animals are the main focus—as well as hundreds of stone tools, and small holes along the cave interior that archaeologists suspect may have reinforced tree-limb scaffolding used by painters to reach the upper surfaces.
On the Ramu River in Papua New Guinea, the Songnor have thrived for 6,000 years. Indigenous people living along the Ramu River fear that runoff from the ongoing construction of the massive Chinese government-owned Ramu NiCo mine will poison their water, fish and gardens, and destroy their environment. Those along the coast worry about about the mine waste being dumped at sea and its effect on their health and fisheries.
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.
Tiwanaku (Tiahuanacu) is an ancient civic and sacred site consisting of former pyramids and enclosures, gateways and monuments located in western Bolivia near the southeast shore of Lake Titikaka.
Arizona’s sacred Oak Flat is threatened with mining by a multinational corporation.
Unique in the modern world, Mongolia has ten sacred mountains protected by Presidential Decree. Honoring sacred mountains has been integral to both shamanic and Buddhist practice in Mongolia, and the country has some of the oldest officially and continuously protected sites dating back to the 13th century.
The Pirá Paraná forms the heart of a large sacred landscape afforded some protection and self-government by the 2,000 indigenous inhabitants. Employing community-driven initiatives has preserved and strengthened traditional knowledge, protected sacred sites, ensured intergenerational cultural transmission, and in the political realm secured indigenous autonomy and rights to administer state resources within Colombia.
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.
The Carmichael Coal Mine is a proposed development of six massive open-cut pits, five underground mines, a coal handling and processing plant, and associated infrastructure, in central Queensland, Australia. If developed as proposed, the mine would be among the largest in the world. Not only would the emissions from burning coal from this mine contribute to global climate change, which is already harming the nearby World Heritage-listed Great Barrier Reef, but the mine would also destroy the ancestral homelands and sacred sites of the Wangan and Jagalingou.
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.
Mes Aynak is home to an ancient Buddhist city and the largest undeveloped copper deposit in the world. Of historical, cultural and spiritual importance to Afghans and Buddhists alike, the copper deposit beneath the 20 ruin sites is now under threat of mining.
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.
Although it straddles the equator, Mount Kenya is usually capped with ice and snow. At 17,058 feet, it is Africa’s second-highest mountain; glaciers nest in its ragged peaks, forests blanket its slopes. This ancient extinct volcano, which rises in the center of the country that shares its name, has long been a wonder to all who beheld its icy peaks gleaming with sunlight.
Living in the harshest of climates, the indigenous peoples of Russia’s far northern Arctic have survived for thousands of years through knowledge systems and practices that revere the spirited landscape they inhabit.
On a hilltop in the French city of Chartres stands a cathedral renowned as a testament to human builders inspired by faith in the divine. One of the world’s best-preserved medieval cathedrals, it is a Gothic architectural achievement that has been called a miracle of stained glass and stone.
Green patches of woodland dot the landscape of India — from bamboo groves on the eastern coast to clumps of trees in the northwestern deserts, and from jungles in the tropical south to dense Himalayan forests in the north.
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.
In the Yunnan Province of southwestern China, strong indigenous cultures have lived for centuries in a dramatic landscape of vertical mountain slopes, high plateaus and deep river gorges.
Since 1532, the inhabitants in the region of Cajamarca, high in the Peruvian Andes, have been invaded by waves of outsiders obsessed with gold. Though the form of colonization has changed over the years, the local descendents of the Inca are still fighting to preserve their land and way of life.
Snowcapped Tongariro and his fellow volcanoes, Ruapehu and Ngauruhoe, rise majestically from the central volcanic plateau of New Zealand’s North Island. To the Maori tribes who have inhabited this land since at least the 14th century, Tongariro is tapu, sacred.
Off the northwest coast of Australia, the islands of the Dampier Archipelago are home to perhaps the largest concentration of rock art in the world, along with Australia’s largest collection of standing stones.
Mecca—officially “Makkah”—is the holy city of Islam. Located in western Saudi Arabia near the Red Sea, in the sandy Valley of Abraham (Wadi Ibrihim), it is the birthplace of the Prophet Muhammed and site of the annual Muslim pilgrimage, or hajj, during the month of Dhu’l-Hijja.
Lake Cowal, often referred to as “the Heartland of the Wiradjuri Nation,” is the largest inland lake in New South Wales, Australia. Scar trees and river-stained gum trees told both the history of Aboriginal ceremonies and intermittent flooding that
Machu Picchu, an Inca citadel located in the Andes Mountains of Peru, is one of the world’s most well known sacred places. A marvel of human engineering melded perfectly into a natural setting of profound beauty, it’s no wonder this place has been adopted as a pilgrimage destination for spiritual seekers of all races and beliefs.
The creation story of the Amungme people, who live in the highlands of the island of Papua, speaks to their close relationship with the land. The story tells of the sacrifice of an ancestral mother for her children and the transformation of her body into the island’s life-giving resources.
Japan is one of the world’s most mountainous countries, so it’s not surprising that mountain worship is an historic element of Japanese culture. And of all the mountains in Japan, Mount Fuji stands out as a unique cultural symbol. At 12,388 feet, Fuji is Japan’s tallest mountain.
According to southern Australian Aboriginal clans, the Dreamtime figure of Ngurunderi chased a giant cod with spear in hand through freshwater marshes, carving the Murray River around Kumarangk.
Long before the concept of national borders existed, the Sami people of arctic Europe inhabited the regions now known as Norway, Sweden, Finland and the Russian Kola Peninsula.
Lying on a slim finger of land stretching south from the Greek mainland, Mount Athos is a religious center maintained by Orthodox Christian monks for over 1,000 years and one of the only UNESCO World Heritage sites in Europe recognized for both its cultural and natural significance.
The Tse Keh Nay, the “people of the Mountains,” have lived for generations in the Rocky and Omineca mountain ranges in north-central British Columbia. Within these mountains are freshwater rivers and lakes, which provide the Tse Keh Nay with the fish that are a major component of their diet.
The Comcáac, meaning “the people” in their native tongue—more commonly known as the Seri—are a small indigenous community living on the northwest coast of Mexico along the Gulf of California (Sea of Cortés), a desert land of stark beauty.
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.
The Sheka Forest in southwest Ethiopia, known as the last indigenous forest in Ethiopia, has long been a source of livelihoods and spiritual practices for local communities.
Tens of centuries ago, amid Ireland’s iconic green, rolling landscape, the kings of Ireland were anointed on a hill of tremendous importance—a place where spirituality met with royalty, and mythical traditions began. The Hill of Tara, one of the most revered spiritual sites in Ireland, is a place where druids held festivals, priestesses were trained and shaman’s rites were performed.
Haida Gwaii, a chain of islands off the coast of British Columbia, has been the home of the Haida people for untold centuries. The distinct coastal culture of the Haida depends on the once-abundant red cedar trees, forests that have been decimated by five decades of intensive clear-cutting.
Sacred forest groves dot the otherwise increasingly degraded landscape of Ghana, in West Africa, providing oases of biodiversity and tradition. The pressures of poverty, cultural change, and migration are causing inhabitants to harvest resources from the groves at an unsustainable rate.
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.
Atop a conical mountain in Sri Lanka sits a large foot-shaped impression in rock that gives the peak its name: Sri Pada or “holy footprint.” This sacred spot, which is also known as Adam’s Peak, figures in the stories of four major faith traditions—Hinduism, Buddhism, Christianity and Islam
Along the southern coast of Kenya, the sacred kaya forests of the Mijikenda tribes are a living legacy of the people’s history, culture and religion. For centuries, these once-extensive lowland forests shielded the homesteads, called “kaya,” of the Mijikenda from invading tribes and served as burial grounds
Mount Olympus exists both as a physical mountain and a metaphorical place. Greek and Roman mythology imagined it as the home of their 12 primary gods and goddesses, and throughout history, several peaks in Greece, Turkey and Cyprus have been named Olympus.
In the arid inland regions of the Pilbara, in Western Australia, water is a precious resource. Permanent bodies of water are rare, and many creeks flow only during short annual rainy seasons. In this unique ecosystem, water sources are carefully guarded to maintain the delicate balance that enables this land and the life within it to thrive.
The term “Bushmen” may bring to mind a romanticized image of the African people living harmoniously in the vast desert, hunting and gathering as their ancestors did for millennia.
Rising above East Africa’s Rift Valley, the verdant hills of the Gamo people abound with sacred sites—a testament to the long presence and enduring traditions of the Gamo community.
For over 1,000 years, the people of Japan have walked pilgrimage routes that wind through the densely forested slopes of the Kii Mountain Range.
For the indigenous peoples living on the steep slopes of Colombia’s Sierra Nevada de Santa Marta, sustaining the balance of the spiritual and ecological world is their sacred task.
In March 2001, the world watched helplessly as Taliban forces in Afghanistan methodically dynamited two of the largest standing Buddha figures in the world. Located in the imposing Bamiyan Valley, the figures, standing 125 and 180 feet, had been carved out of sheer sandstone cliffs
Bulgaria’s Rila Monastery is a symbol of national identity representing the persistence of Bulgarian culture and faith despite centuries of foreign rule. The land surrounding it is protected as the Rila Monastery Nature Park
Emerging from the mist that covers the island of Borneo, the otherworldly appearance of multi-peaked Mount Kinabalu mirrors the reverence the indigenous Kadazan have for it. They call the mountain akina-balu, resting place of the ancestral spirits
Throughout the famed Himalayan mountains are large, hidden valleys known as beyul, places of peace and refuge revered by Tibetan Buddhists. These secret lands of legend have drawn Buddhist seekers for centuries
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.
The vhaVenda clans of northern South Africa, in present-day Limpopo Province, are among the nation’s most traditional, hewing to rituals and practices passed down from their ancestors.
Winding down from the timeless cloud forests of New Guinea’s Central Range, the Sepik River’s majestic folds form the core of one of the largest and most intact freshwater basins in the Asia Pacific region.
In Chinese, the term for pilgrimage, ch’ ao-shan chin-hsiang, is literally translated as “journeying to a mountain and offering incense.” Throughout China’s history, Buddhist and Daoist pilgrims have gone to mountains seeking spiritual sustenance and solace
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.
There are many who contend that there is something inherently sacred about places that cultures adopt as holy sites. Of all the Earth’s sacred places, this idea seems most embodied in the city of Jerusalem.
In the remote and rugged high desert of Egypt’s Sinai Peninsula lies a land with immense historical and spiritual significance to the world’s three great monotheistic religions. The Jewish, Christian and Muslim traditions all have deep ties to the landscape and monuments of this region.
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.
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 Holy Island of Lindisfarne has been a Christian holy site and pilgrimage center since 635, playing a pivotal role as a cradle of Christianity in Northern England and Southern Scotland. Nature and spirituality are very much linked here through a line of “nature saints,” of which St. Cuthbert
The Bay Area’s oldest shellmound at Huichin, now Berkeley, was a massive burial site
Living in the rainforests of Borneo in Southeast Asia, the Penan people are one of the last indigenous groups in the world with members who still follow a traditional nomadic lifestyle, relying solely on their natural environment for material and spiritual sustenance.
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.
In the vast northern reaches of Alberta, home to the Cree, Chipewyan Dene, Dunne-za and Métis peoples, one of the last remaining stretches of coniferous boreal forest has become a center of international attention.
Winding 1,560 miles across northern India, from the Himalaya Mountains to the Indian Ocean, the Ganges River is not a sacred place: it is a sacred entity. Known as Ganga Ma—Mother Ganges—the river is revered as a goddess whose purity cleanses the sins of the faithful and aids the dead on their path toward heaven.
In southwestern Siberia, along Russia’s border with China, Mongolia and Kazakhstan, the Altai or “Golden” Mountains are home to the semi-nomadic Altai people and to many endangered species, including the totemic snow leopard and argali mountain sheep.
Dongria Kondh community councils voted to deny mining rights in their sacred Niyamgiri Hills to Vedanta Resources and forbid the company from extracting 73 million tons of bauxite from the hills.
The Xingu River system, which runs through central Brazil northward to the Amazon, is a vital part of the complex ecosystem that sustains the world’s largest rainforests and a great diversity of cultures.
In the forests of Guatemala’s El Petén region lie the ruined cities of one of the world’s great ancient cultures, the Maya. The tops of stone pyramids peer over a dense jungle canopy teeming with wildlife and diverse plant species.
Revered by four Asian religions comprising millions of people, Tibet’s Mount Kailash is certainly one of the world’s most sacred places. Pilgrims of the Buddhist, Hindu, Jain and Tibetan Bön faiths come to Kailash to complete ritual walks around the base of the mountain.
Many visitors think of Machu Picchu and its mystical Incan heights as the spiritual center for the people of Peru. However, to the Quechua people, the glorious 20,945-foot Mount Ausangate in the Andes is the main apu (deity).
Home to one of the world’s largest bodies of rock art, Kakadu remains alive with the spirits of the Dreamtime.
Nearly 1,000 circles of stone dot the landscape of the British Isles, throughout England, Scotland, Wales and Ireland, the most well-known being Stonehenge, which for decades was threatened by a road-building scheme.
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
Rising 1,100 feet above the Australian desert, the red sandstone monolith known as Uluru is not just an international tourist destination but a symbol of the Aboriginal struggle for land rights.
In the mystical creation period known as the Dreamtime, the Rainbow Serpent sent cyclones and floods across a vast plain on Australia’s northern coast. According to the Aboriginal people.
A proposed gold-copper mine threatens traditional Tsilhqot’in territory where the people have hunted, trapped, fished, collected medicinal plants, and shared their knowledge and history from generation to generation through cultural gatherings and ceremonies.