American Indian Religious Freedom Act - Effects

Effects

The different unique identities of Native American tribes often coincide with lands that animate and sustain their religious practices and beliefs. Lyng v. Northwest Indian Cemetery Protective Association (1988) is a landmark case in the Supreme Court's decisions affecting Native American religion under the AIRFA. The bureaucratic decisions to alter land sites implemented by the Court on this case, constitute invasions of tribal self-understanding. This case helped to prove that the dissipation of tribal identity is the consequence of land desecration. The fact that land desecration is allowed to happen so easily is a result of the absence of enforcement and stability within the terms of the American Indian Religious Freedom Act. Lyng v. Northwest Indian Cemetery Protective Association, in 1988, denied the Yurok, Tolowa, and Karok tribes their rights to religious freedom under the first amendment by ruling in favor of the United States Forest Service. The Forest Service wanted to build a road that went directly through the sacred lands of those tribes. Tribal leaders testified that the road would destroy parts of the pristine mountains and high country that the tribes considered sacred and essential to their religious beliefs and practices. They expressed their concerns in court, outlining the burden imposed upon their religious freedom in accordance with the provisions of the AIRFA. However, the court determined that because the tribes had not stated a requisite legal burden on those rights that they could not receive protection under the AIRFA. Herein lies the fault of the act, which is even more evident due to the Theordoratus Report

The Theodoratus Report was a comprehensive study prompted by the American Indian Religious Freedom Act during Lyng v. Northwest Indian Cemetery Protective Association and conducted by the United States Forest Service in order to evaluate policies and procedures to protect Native American religious cultural rights and practices. This study was done in order to provide definitive information on the impact that the Forest Service's actions would have on Native American religious culture in high country. This study was completed in April 1979 and was titled "Cultural Resources of the Chimney Rock Section, Gasquet-Orleans Road, Six Rivers National Forest" and was written by Dr. Dorothea J. Theodoratus, Dr. Joseph L. Chartkoff, and Ms. Kerry K. Chartkoff. It was a compilation of ethnographic, archaeological and historical data that identified the culture contained in the area that the Forest Service proposed to be the site of the Chimney Rock Section of the Gasquet-Orleans Road. This culture belonged to the Yurok, Karok, and Tolowa peoples. In the final recommendations to the Forest Service of the report, it criticizes them for their ignorance towards the physical and historical significance and religious importance of the proposed site for the construction of a road. The report warned the Forest Service against the ruinous impact of road construction and its logging and mining operations and pointed out the fault in the administrative philosophy that high country is a natural resource that should be managed and improved. The basis for the report's claim is the fact that the site was a primary religious experience that was indispensable to the spiritual life of traditional people whose connection to the land can be traced from prehistory to the present. The resource improvements proposed by the Forest Service would double as the factors that destroyed the religious reality that was crucial to the religious practices of the Yurok, Karok, and Tolowa. The report stated that the only appropriate management of such land should be its preservation in a natural state.

The Theodoratus Report, in effect, established a guideline by which the Forest Service would be able to understand the importance of land to Native American culture. Because they had commissioned the report and recognized its significance they conformed with the AIRFA in the Lyng case, but it was the Theodoratus Report, not the AIRFA, that compelled the Forest Service to follow the report's collection of data on the religious significance of the high country. However, nothing within the AIRFA prevented the Forest Service from ignoring the warning of its own commissioned concerning the destruction of the Yurok, Karok, and Tolowa religious traditions.

This case's decision states that tribes have no First Amendment right of religious freedom that can halt federal land management of public lands that contain sacred tribal spaces. This decision became the standing precedent that threatened the survival of any traditional Native American community whose sacred lands, by the fault of the government's history of Indian affairs, are on public land and off of reservations. The Supreme Court advocated its decision to refuse the countenance of the religious valuation of land as representing its responsibility towards enforcing the First Amendment rights of the Native American plaintiff.

Another example of the effects of the AIRFA in the Supreme Court is the case of Employment Division v. Smith in 1990, which denied the Native American Church its constitutional rights. Alfred Smith, a Native American who had been born on the Klamath Reservation in Oregon, was fired from his job at an agency in Roseburg, Oregon that helped develop services for Native American clientele. His termination was based on his attendance to the ceremonies of the Native American Church, which he had belonged to for several years, because the N.A.C. makes use of peyote as a sacrament. Once he was fired, another member of the N.A.C. employed at the agency was also fired. Alfred Smith and his co-worker did not fight to win back their jobs, but fought for their rightful benefits when they were denied unemployment compensation. Smith took his case to the Oregon courts who vindicated his claim that his use of peyote was protected under the free-exercise clause, and in turn, the AIRFA. The Court passed the claim on to the U.S. Supreme Court which overturned Oregon's ruling. The Supreme Court stated that they could in fact be denied unemployment benefits because by using peyote they were in violation of state criminal law. The Smith decision prompted the development of the Native American Religious Freedom Project which involved and concerned almost every Native American tribe in the country. The case was taken up with Congress, and in 1993 the Religious Freedom Restoration Act was passed, and by 1994 the American Indian Religious Freedom Act Amendments were passed as Public Law 103-344. The Amendments restored the constitutional rights of the Native American Church.