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Conflicts over Native American sacred places on public lands usually involve multiple interest groups. That was true in a dispute over a National Park Service (NPS) policy to discourage climbing at Devils Tower National Monument during the month of the Sun Dance. Such conflicts sometimes end in court, as happened when a group called the Bear Lodge Multiple Use Association-a commercial guiding service-and recreational cumbers sued the NPS to challenge the plan as a violation of the Establishment Clause of the First Amendment; that clause provides that "Congress shall make no law ... respecting an establishment of religion." The Cheyenne River Sioux Tribe and several of its spiritual leaders intervened on the side of the NPS. What made this case unusual is that a variety of "mainstream" religious and religious rights organizations joined Native American groups and scholars who described themselves as "active in Federal Indian law and/or the religious issues under the First Amendment" in filing friend-of-the-court briefs in Bear Lodge Multiple Use Association v. Babbitt.1 The case reflects a broadening of the more common litigation alliances in which environmental groups participate alongside tribes and other Native American organizations. Here, no environmental groups participated as litigation allies.
This case study uses interviews, judicial decisions, litigation documents, and other public records to examine the alliance in this lawsuit and its implications. This article discusses factors that informed decisions by Native American and "public interest" groups and the process by which they allied themselves.
Mato Tipila (Bear Lodge)-also known as Devils Tower and, in Lakota, He Hota Paha (Grey Horn Butte)-is a rugged butte towering above the Belle Fourche River in northeastern Wyoming. The United States' first national monument is a sacred place steeped in Native American culture and history, a place of religious practices and creation. The monument is open for recreational, aesthetic, research, and commercial uses under management by the NPS, a unit of the U.S. Department of the Interior. It has become a magnet for as many as five thousand to six thousand climbers and their innumerable spectators among the monument's five hundred thousand annual visitors. As a result it is an economic asset for the regional tourism industry.
In 1995 after three years of discussion including consultation with Native American groups, the...