COURT PROTECTS NATIVE AMERICAN SACRED SITE

Forest Service Historic Preservation Plan (HPP) - purpose "is to ensure that the Medicine Wheel and Medicine Mountain are managed in a manner that protects the integrity of the site as a sacred site and a nationally important cultural property". The area has archaeological evidence suggesting human presence for over 10,000 years

October 5, 2004

COURT PROTECTS NATIVE AMERICAN SACRED SITE

On September 20, 2004 the Tenth Circuit of the United States Court of Appeals confirmed the ruling of the US District Court of Wyoming that the US Forest Service's management plan for the Sacred Medicine Wheel is legal.

The original action had been brought against the United States and Medicine Wheel Coalition by Wyoming Sawmills Inc. They challenged the Forest Service Historic Preservation Plan (HPP) on the grounds that the HPP was unconstitutional as it provided "establishment of religion". The District Court did not address the constitutional issue, holding that Wyoming Sawmills did not have standing to raise a First Amendment Establishment Clause claim. This decision was upheld by the Appeals Court in Denver.

The HPP's purpose "is to ensure that the Medicine Wheel and Medicine Mountain are managed in a manner that protects the integrity of the site as a sacred site and a nationally important cultural property". The area has archaeological evidence suggesting human presence for over 10,000 years and the complex of stones, cairns, tepee rings, spokes, stone quarry, ancient trails and buried archaeological sites is held sacred by many tribes, including the Northern Arapaho, Northern Cheyenne, Crow and Eastern Shoshone.

The Medicine Wheel National Historic Landmark was created in 1969 to preserve the Medicine Wheel, located at 9,642 feet in the Bighorn National Forest.

(Produced with acknowledgements to the Native American Rights Fund and to"Sacred Objects and Sacred Places" by Andrew Gulliford (Colorado, 2000).
FOUR DIRECTIONS UK works with Native Americans promoting communication, educating non-Native communities and advocating in support of social, environmental and cultural justice, and the protection of sacred lands, places and objects.
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