Public Lands-Private Ceremonies: Native American Religious Practices and Public Lands in the West

January 21, 2009
Time TBD, Wittemyer Courtroom, Wolfe Law School (map)

The topic will highlight, explore and understand the nature of use conflicts on the public lands which arise from either extractive or non-extractive land uses by the dominant culture which are inconsistent with traditional religious or cultural uses made of the same lands by Native Americans. The "Arizona Snowbowl Snow-making Case," the Mt. Taylor uranium exploration case, the Nine-Mile Canyon natural gas exploration case and many other examples serve to illustrate tension between Native American religious practice and non-religious uses of lands in the American West. (The choice of the working title "Public Lands-Private Ceremonies" was quite arbitrary and I invite a better one.)

The program is presented by the Natural Resources and Environmental Law Section of the Boulder County Bar Association, together with the Center of the American West, in cooperation with the University of Colorado, School of Law and others.

Presenters:

With Patty Limerick as our moderator, Director of the Center of American West, CU Boulder

A representative from Native American Rights Fund (Boulder)

Robert W. Lawrence from Davis, Graham & Stubbs (Denver) co-chair of the BCBA Natural Resources Section

LouAnn Jacobson, Manager, Canyons of the Ancients National Monument, (Dolores, Colorado)

The Daddy Canyon Complex in Nine Mile Canyon, Utah photo courtesy of Tricia Simpson.