AMERICAN INDIAN SACRED PLACES AS GEOHERITAGE RESOURCES

The homelands of American Indian peoples in the Southwest are rich with landscapes and features generally considered to be national, if not global, geoheritage resources. These places hold meanings and attachments for their indigenous inhabitants that are often divergent from and in conflict with those of non-Native visitors and researchers, including geoscientists. American Indians consider their lands to be sacred, which implies a kinship among people, landforms, biota, and natural phenomena; and is manifested as a complex web of beliefs, stories, and teachings associated with specific places. On traditional as well as legally-titled Indian homelands, many mainstream uses and management practices, even those that are ecologically sustainable, may be regarded as inappropriate or disrespectful by Native people. This holds for geoscientific research and interpretation, as Euro-American and Indigenous cultures often have different philosophies on the nature, importance, and free pursuit of scientific inquiry.

We will discuss the nature of the sacredness of land in the American Southwest and its implications for geoheritage management and geoscientific research, from the dual perspectives of a Western-trained geologist and Diné (Navajo) traditional practitioner.