Exploiting the Sacred: Corporate Interest in Native American Sacred Space

Since the first Europeans stepped foot on what is now the United States of America, Native peoples have been torn away from the spaces with which they have deep spiritual connections. The colonization of America by Britain in 1607 marked the beginning of a long history of coercion and mistreatment of Native tribes. Diseases brought from Europe killed millions of indigenous people - up to 90% of the population in the hardest hit regions, and conflicts between white Europeans and Native people took the lives of well over 30,000 people (this number doesn’t include deaths by massacres and genocidal acts). Native Americans were also subjected to near-constant relocation, land theft, and exploitation. Today, the exploitation of Native Americans and their sacred spaces looks much different but is just as insidious; corporate interests, specifically in oil and other fossil fuel resources, have recreated a system that disregards the spiritual importance of Native American spaces. Multi-billion dollar companies have dubbed this exploitation “development” and have used their massive clout to coerce Native American tribes into forfeiting their sacred space. In this paper, I will use Ron E. Hassner’s theories about sacred space and conflict to examine if they can be used to explain the current conflicts over Native American sacred space for economic use.

Before exploring a case study of corporate exploitation, it is important to articulate the power structures that perpetuate oppression of Native American people. To do this, we must first look briefly at the history of Native American land. Between 1776 and 1887, Native Americans lost over 1.6 billion acres of their land to colonizers. Using vague treaties and marking boundaries of Native American reservations with landmarks - rather than precise borders - allowed for greater interpretation on the government’s part of what was and wasn’t Native land. This ambiguity of borders lead to a dynamic that privileged white colonizers who were able to make decisions about Native land. Because many Native American groups had a deep connection to the land on which they lived, the loss of it can be seen as an attack on their spirituality and identity. Indigenous peoples “defined themselves by the land, by the sacred places that bounded and shaped their world [and] recognized a unity in their physical and spiritual universes, the union of natural and supernatural.” Native Americans were often relocated to land that was “largely unwanted” or what was (at the time) seen as “remote environments of little economic value.” Native American groups were often driven away from spaces in which they had been deeply connected to spiritually. The sacred spaces they left behind when they were forced onto reservations then fell under jurisdiction of the government. Once oil and other energy resources were discovered in Native American sacred spaces, attitudes towards their usefulness changed dramatically. Corporations began lining up for economic access to the sacred spaces that Native Americans had been connected to for centuries and forced to evacuate.

While there are many sacred spaces being destroyed by corporate economic interests, the one I will focus on here is Weatherman Draw in southcentral Montana. The canyon, called “The Valley of Shields” or “The Valley of Chiefs” by Native peoples, is home to the largest collection of indigenous art on the continent. Weatherman Draw is owned by the government, but considered a sacred space by the Crow, Blackfeet, Comanche, Northern Arapaho, Northern Cheyenne and Eastern Shoshone tribes who view the canyon as a place of peace. Members from at least a dozen different tribes contributed to the artwork in the canyon over the last 1,000 years, making it one of the most revered physical memory to Native Americans. Indigenous people still engage in burials, prayers, and other rituals in the canyon and utilize it as a living spiritual center. Despite its significance to Native people, a Colorado-based company, the Anschutz Exploration Corp., acquired two leases to Weatherman Draw in 1994. The leases gave Anschutz mineral rights to the canyon with expectations the project could yield 10 million barrels of oil from the sacred canyon. A multitude of issues arise from Anschutz’s drilling of Weatherman Draw. Creating a mine site would mean that access to the canyon would have to increase; the traffic that would follow makes the space vulnerable to graffiti and defilement. Native Americans have voiced concerns that the drilling and related activity will disturb the spirits that dwell in the canyon. In a statement from the Northern Cheyenne tribe, leaders lamented that “if the spirits that exist in the area were driven away, important Northern Cheyenne ties with the spiritual realm would be irreparably severed.” An Environmental Impact Statement, an assessment that would explore the long-term impacts of oil drilling was not planned, and the importance of the site to multiple indigenous people in the area went largely ignored.

In his article To Halve and To Hold: Conflicts over Sacred Space and the Problem of Indivisibility, Ron. E Hassner proposes a set of conditions that makes a space sacred and examines the way conflict plays out for and on sacred space. Hassner broadly defines a sacred space as a “means of access between the human and the divine world, a rupture in the ordinary domain through which heaven peeks, there the diving issues forth into the human realm.” Hassner proposes two parameters of measuring a group’s attachment to a sacred space: centrality and exclusivity. Centrality aims to examine the space’s ability to fulfill communication, presence, and meaning in a religious context and locate its spiritual landscape. As noted before, Weatherman Draw appears to meet the requirements of centrality with its deep spiritual importance to surrounding Native American tribes. The second criterion, exclusivity, “measures the degree to which access to the sacred space and behavior within it are circumscribed, monitored, and sanctioned.” In Weatherman’s Draw, behavior is expected to be peaceful and respectful of the divine. The worry that oil drilling and workers will disrupt the spirits reveals the close correlation between the canyon and the spiritual realm. According to the Native tribes who utilize the sacred space, failure to abide by peaceful regulations within Weatherman’s Draw can upset the spirits that dwell within the indigenous wall art and, as Hassner points out, “incur the wrath of the divine” and expose the local people to harm.

Aside from centrality and exclusivity, Hassner’s main criterion for a sacred space is that it is indivisible. A sacred space, he argues, is only indivisible if it meets three conditions: integrity, boundaries, and nonfungibility. Integrity requires that the sacred space cannot be divided without decreasing its value. Boundaries refers to the consensus of the sacred space’s borders between all parties involved. Finally, nonfungibility is the belief of all parties that the space cannot be replaced or exchanged for something of equal value. For the purposes of this paper, I want to focus on the last criteria, nonfungibility, but what has been touched on already demonstrates that Weatherman Draw meets the first two requirements. Nonfungibility, because it is linked to value, is an important criteria to explore. A question we must consider is, what does it mean for a space to be valuable? For Native Americans, Weatherman’s Draw is valuable because of its historical and spiritual significance to the tribes. Value is measured in more abstract ways; the concept of spiritual wealth is one that many non-Native Americans may have a hard time grasping. For corporations - in this case the Anschutz Exploration Corp. - a space’s value is measured much differently. Corporate interests view land as a means of profit, rather than as a place of connection to the “other world.” While Native Americans look at Weatherman’s Draw and see a plethora of history and spiritual significance, Anshutz looks at the same space and sees opportunity for monetary gain.

Viewing sacred space as a way to turn a profit, Hassner points out, causes a clash with the people who view that space as sacred. In disputes over sacred spaces that involve a secular entity, in this case a corporation, and a religious group, in this case Native Americans, most often the religious group either has a history of or is currently subjected to mistreatment and suppression. As noted earlier, Native Americans have historically fallen victim to racialized policies and power imbalances. John Rawls, who devised the revolutionary “Justice as Fairness” theory, describes structural injustice as “the way in which the major social institutions distribute fundamental rights and duties and determine the division of of advantages” in a way that favors certain identity groups (white, male, upper-class). A dark history of colonization and exploitation of Native Americans has long gone untold, and many non-Native Americans are unaware of the structural oppression committed against Native American tribes. One of these injustices is the defiling of their sacred spaces for corporate profit. Because America privileges Christian faiths in all social and political realms, many Native American traditions are dismissed as “godless” or “uncivilized.” This has deep historical footing; colonizers from Europe didn’t recognize the rituals practiced by Native Americans, so they decided that they were outside the category of “religion” and were thus something else. Historical attempts to “Christianize” Native Americans show how rampant cultural imperialism was and the conflict over Weatherman’s draw shows the long-term implications.

The aforementioned superiority complex for white non-Natives is deeply rooted in today’s strained interactions between Native groups and white-dominated corporations. Corporations are now able to exploit Native American sacred spaces with little impunity, and much of the reasoning for this is seen in Hassner’s “To Halve and To Hold” article. Power structures, indivisibility, and perceptions of value all play roles in how conflicts over sacred space arise and are handled. Weatherman’s Draw, with its 1,000 year history of sacredness, is a potent example of how conflict over sacred space can be especially difficult to resolve and highlights the structural violence that perpetuates the oppression and indifference of Native American people and their sacred spaces.

Works Cited

Hassner, Ron E. "“To Halve and to Hold”: Conflicts over Sacred Space and the Problem of Indivisibility." Security Studies 12.4 (2003): 1-33. Web.

Lewis, David. "Native Americans and the Environment." Land Use History of North America. N.p., n.d. Web. 05 Nov. 2014.

"Native American Netroots." Native American Netroots. N.p., 28 Dec. 2009. Web. 02 Nov. 2014.

Onion, Rebecca, and Claudio Saunt. "Interactive Time-Lapse Map Shows How the U.S. Took More Than 1.5 Billion Acres From Native Americans." Slate Magazine. N.p., n.d. Web. 05 Nov. 2014.

Rawls, John. A Theory of Justice. Cambridge, MA: Belknap of Harvard UP, 1971. Print.

Zarskyd, Lyuba. "Is Nothing Sacred? Corporate Responsibility IS NOTHING SACRED? for the Protection of Native American Sacred Sites." (n.d.): n. pag. Web.