Becket Fund defends Forest Service plan for Native American sacred siteNov 13, 2002
A U.S. Forest Service "Historic Preservation Plan" (HPP) for the
Medicine Wheel National Landmark in Wyoming does not violate the Establishment
Clause of the First Amendment to the U.S. Constitution, a brief filed with the
10th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals makes clear.
The amicus curiae brief (PDF format, 96K) was filed by The Becket Fund for
Religious Liberty on behalf of itself and a wide variety of religious organizations,
including the Bureau of Catholic Indian Missions, the General Conference of
Seventh-Day Adventists, the General Assembly of the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.),
the Union of Orthodox Jewish Congregations of America, the Baptist Joint Committee
on Public Affairs, and the Council on American Islamic Relations.
The Forest Service was sued by Wyoming Sawmills Inc., which challenged a delay
in the Horse Creek timber sale near Medicine Wheel Mountain in the Bighorn National
Forest. The mountain has been used for centuries by various Native American
tribes in the region for religious and other purposes. While the mountain is
a popular tourist site, the HPP allows Native Americans to be granted privacy
for religious and traditional cultural uses for a minimum of 12 days each year.
Wyoming Sawmills challenged the plan, arguing that it amounted to establishment
of religion.
The Becket Fund brief states that the Medicine Wheel HPP is "a carefully
crafted, constitutional exercise of the government's powers to accommodate religion
by removing burdens to its practice while simultaneously accomplishing a variety
of secular goals." The plan also permits an FAA radar station and five
other electronics sites on the mountain, as well as a small dredging operation,
livestock grazing and recreation nearby. (Native American groups objected to
some of those uses.)
The brief notes that such accommodations of religious practice on government
property are hardly unique to the Forest Service. "Chaplain programs in
the military, hospitals and prisons also involve the use of the government's
real property for religious purposes," it points out. "The government
retains ample authority to accommodate religion, and the Constitution does not
require that the purpose of every government-sanctioned activity by unrelated
to religion."
Several years ago, The Becket Fund joined with the Native American Rights Fund
and the Indian Law Resource Center in a successful battle to allow religious
use of another Native American sacred site in Wyoming, Devil's Tower.
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