What is the difference between mythology and the sacred?

Native American myths are inherently tied to natural spaces.

Every tribe has its own belief system, origin, story, and language.

Often, myths explain our origins as humans in relation to the natural world around us, which in turn, makes just about all living beings and every environment a sacred space.

In contrast, the United States is built on myths where some would argue nothing is sacred and almost everything is up for exploitation and extraction.

Don't believe me?

Well, do you really think George Washington cut down a cherry tree?

The guy owned slaves.

I mean, come on.

Do you really think the National Park System was created because Theodore Roosevelt wanted to keep animals alive?

And don't get me started on Mount Rushmore, carved mostly with dynamite by a man with ties to the Ku Klux Klan onto the face of a sacred mountain.

And that's a mythological symbol of independence and freedom in America?

If America was founded on freedom, which includes freedom to exercise religion, why can't tribes access spaces that are the source of their spirituality and origins?

Do you see the double standards here?

This is A People's History of Native America with me, Tai Leclaire Let's begin with the idea of self-determination, which you'll understand from our reservations Episode.

Recognized tribes as sovereign nations.

The right of self-determination is almost always tied to Native rights to land and other resources.

So when we look at the National Park System through the lens of Native America, conversations about reparations and who controls what are not just about nature, worship, or sustenance, but about preserving sacred land for the survival of tribes.

But let's back up a bit.

Before I drag John Muir for his rebrand of sacred land theft as a patriotic act.

Let's touch on the European settlers favorite myth the Doctrine of Discovery.

Essentially, the Doctrine of Discovery was based on various papal bulls, including a 1493 papal decree from the Pope that gave Christian explorers the right to claim and exploit any land they discovered, legalizing the theft of land, labor, and resources from Indigenous peoples.

These explorers self-identified as instruments of divine design and superior to the original occupants of the land, which led to the rape, robbery, and murder of Indigenous peoples around the world.

A case in 1823 reinforced this myth that the very foundation of land ownership came from discovery and conquest.

In Johnson v. McIntosh, the Supreme Court ruled that Indians had only a right of occupancy, but held no actual land title, again based on the Doctrine of Discovery, which said that European nations owned the land the moment they discovered it.

This mentality was used to justify the diminishment of Indigenous rights by creating strict limitations on a tribe.

Sovereignty over land and resources.

Native people lost ownership, and settlers took over exploiting stolen lands for their own economic gain.

That is, until the mindset shifted towards wanting to preserve natural wonders as places for observation and reflection.

John Muir and his settler crew saw a need for places to play in and pray in, where nature may heal and give strength to body and soul.

After years of campaigning, in 1872 Yellowstone National Park was established as the world's first official national park.

However, Muir had this whole look but don't touch vision, where humans and natural conservation were simply incompatible.

He wrote that Native peoples have no right place in the landscape of wild California, plus a whole bunch of other stuff that dismiss the long history of Indigenous land stewardship.

This mentality helped justify a conservation approach that cleared Native people and their culture, beliefs, and political structures off their sacred lands in order to create what is still today widely revered as America's best idea: National Parks.

So for Indigenous peoples, the question now wasn't only losing the land, it meant losing so much more.

This brings us to the present day Land Back movement.

Land Back is essentially a catchall phrase to describe environmental, cultural, and political efforts to place Indigenous ancestral land back into Indigenous hands.

To understand why land means so much to Indigenous people and why its loss hit so hard, let's call up Krystal Two Bulls, the executive director of Honor the Earth Krystal over a century after the John Muir effect.

Why is reclaiming land still so crucial for tribal communities?

My understanding in all of my stories, from my community, from my tribe, tell me that everything that we know about who we are and how we are supposed to be, and how we are supposed to act, why we are here on this earth comes from the land.

What we're fighting for is for full uninhibited access to reclaim our relationship to the land, the way that it was pre-colonization.

Right?

And that is like the epitome of Land Back, because that represents us being able to reclaim language, reclaim teachings, reclaim our ceremonies, reclaim our economies, reclaim our housing systems like our kinship systems, education, food, healthcare, all of these things that are not being done very well right now.

We already had established.

Let's use Krystal's tribe as an example.

According to the Lakota Sioux Tribes Six Grandfathers, mountain was named in honor of the six deities responsible for the creation.

It was and is a sacred site.

That's why they spent decades protecting it from European settlers until that unsettled Fort Laramie Treaty of 1868, which has been broken time and time again.

In 1874, settlers discovered gold, and the US government decided they wanted back the scant land that they had previously set aside for the Sioux people.

The Sioux tribe said no because it violated the Treaty of Fort Laramie.

And so the Great Sioux War began.

A lot of battles and Sioux casualties.

Later, the US forced the Sioux and their allies to surrender, confiscating the land in 1877 to make it into a bit of a tourism hotspot.

State historian Doane Robinson hired a white man again with ties to the KKK, to explode and drill the faces of four presidents into the Holy Mountain.

Mount Rushmore was established, and then the monument came under the control of the US National Park Service for all to appreciate.

Oh, except for the people who actually belong there and had rights to it.

Krystal, what was the impact of turning land into National Parks?

Where National Parks are and where they were where it started is really where you probably see the most resistance from Indigenous peoples.

And so it was a very strategic thing because we were in our power, not a colonial power, but in our power, like probably spiritual power, and strongest because we were on our own lands.

Right?

And we had that strength from that.

So if you remove us from that, it weakens us and it makes it easier to dominate and easier to control.

and folks like John Muir represent that.

Sure.

The U.S. government is now allowing Indigenous oversight and participation in land management.

Problem solved?

Lots of Native American tribes would argue it's far from it, because when the US government decided to control Native land, along with it came laws that prevented ceremonies and access to harvesting sacred plants, hunting sacred animals, and foraging.

The First Amendment of the US Constitution states Congress will make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof.

This was ratified in 1791, yet it took until 1978 for the American Indian Religious Freedom Act, which in theory was meant to finally grant Natives the same freedom, but it was toothless.

For example, in 1988, the Supreme Court allowed a logging road through the sacred lands in the Chimney Rock area used by the Yurok, Karuk, and Tolowa tribes.

The land is still vulnerable to federal Indian law and corporate greed, which means so is the foundation for tribal spirituality and religion.

Look, I'm going to be real with you.

As mythology influences different values and ideals about land, finding common ground between the general public, the National Park System, tribes, governments, and environmentalist isn't easy.

Krystal circling back, what else would you like our friends to know about why we should protect sacred spaces?

The way that extractive industry is moving right now.

They hold nothing sacred versus us.

We hold everything sacred.

And so we're kind of forced into these positions of identifying specific spaces that we need to kind of make sure and to ensure are protected.

But at the end of the day, all of it is sacred because all of this land, no matter where we are like, gives us life and therefore should be protected.

We spoke about the Land Back movement at the beginning of our conversation, and I know there are people out there who are nervous about the concept.

Krystal, to wrap us up here.

Can you touch on this?

People are scared that we are going to do to them what they did to us, and that is colonial thinking.

And we are not colonizers as Indigenous peoples.

That is not what we do.

That is not our teachings.

That is not our practices.

That is not our way.

We are not colonizers.

What we are proposing is a new way of being with each other.

It's not about ownership and it's not about power.

And it's for sure not about colonizing and perpetuating colonial practices.

The biggest pushbacks I get when I talk about land back is like, oh, well, what are you going to do, send everyone back?

You know, I don't think that's reality.

And I, I have to maintain hope and faith in people and in humanity that we're capable of doing that we are capable of evolving and growing and healing our relationships with each other, to be able to have that hard conversation.

What does that look like to come to my people instead?

Thank you for your time and the knowledge you shared.

Krystal.

The Doctrine of Discovery.

Once a scapegoat for the erasure of Indigenous people from every continent today, is still a scapegoat for multinational corporations to legitimize mining, fracking, logging and water theft.

Take Apache Stronghold v. the United States, which was rejected for repeal in May 2024 despite dozens of tribal nations in support of the plaintiff.

Apache Stronghold the Apache Stronghold grassroots organization was suing the federal government under religious freedom protection laws to stop their sacred land called Oak Flat, being transferred to Resolution Copper.

Oak Flats is viewed as a sacred ceremonial ground, as well as a cliff where around 100 Apaches jumped to their death as the US Army approached in the 1800s, this case proved that the myth of discovery is not a relic of the past.

It might take on different forms from settlers, corporations or politicians, but still the mindset persists.

Thanks for watching.

For more, you can check out the incredible new season of Native America Now on the PBS app or on your local PBS station.