Hundreds of Indigenous sacred sites across the country — places of Indigenous foods, medicines, ceremony, burial sites, and creation stories — have been threatened and desecrated by the climate crisis and by harmful development projects like pipelines, mining activities, and resource extraction.

Far too often it’s happened in violation of federal treaties and without the consent of Tribal communities who have traditional and spiritual connections to the land.

Current laws fail to adequately protect Tribal government interests on federal land. But two landmark pieces of legislation would ensure that Native people have a seat at the decision-making table when it comes to managing and protecting sacred and cultural sites: 

• Advancing Tribal Parity on Public Land Act would prohibit the sale of public land containing a Tribal cultural site, where a Tribal nation retains treaty or other reserved rights, or that contains a former reservation. Also, it requires federal land management agencies to provide Tribal governments with meaningful public involvement opportunities in land use planning, and mandates that public land advisory boards include at least one Tribal representative.
• Tribal Cultural Areas Protection Act establishes a national system of culturally significant sites on public lands, prohibits mining and other forms of development that would impair Tribal cultural areas’ cultural values, and ensures that Tribal nations have the ability to protect, co-manage, and use the cultural sites they have used for generations.

We must update federal land management laws to increase protection for federal lands that contain Tribal cultural sites, and to ensure that Tribal governments are afforded the rights due to them as sovereign nations.

Tell Congress to pass the Advancing Tribal Parity on Public Land Act and the Tribal Cultural Areas Protection Act by adding your name now.