Property Rights and Sacred Sites: Federal Regulatory Responses to American Indian Religious Claims on Public Land

Part I examines the history of Indian sacred sites protection. It discusses the historic lack of agency protection for these sites, the attempt and failure to win judicial protection for them in Lyng v. Northwest Indian Cemetery Protective Assessment, and the impact of Lyng on later sacred sites protection efforts. Part II focuses on recent federal agency efforts to preserve sacred sites, the effectiveness of these efforts, and the reasons behind this change in agency policy. Part III argues that agencies are better able to consider the interests of all users of sacred sites, and therefore that agency protection, when combined with statutory consultation provisions and judicial enforcement, is preferable to the exclusively judicial and legislative protections typically sought by sacred sites advocates.(Summary extracted from the article)