November 25, 2025

Episode 188: Carrying the Day Reordering Legal Values Toward Indigenous Rights in Sacred Sites


Indigenous communities are often invited to participate in the conversation about access to their sacred sites but rarely do their interests prevail. Time and again, their input is received and yet made subordinate to competing interests from corporate powers, scientific pursuits, and even recreation.  Michalyn Steele joins Lindsay Langholz to discuss how the law could be changed to reorder existing values and give greater weight to Indigenous interests in sacred sites.

Host: Lindsay Langholz, Senior Director of Policy and Program

Guest: Michalyn Steele, Marion G. Romney Professor of Law, BYU Law

Link: The Native American Graves Protection and Repatriation Act as a Model of Cultural Sovereignty for Protecting Indigenous Sacred Sites, by Michalyn Steele

Link: Rethinking Protections For Indigenous Sacred Sites, by Stephanie Hall Barclay and Michalyn Steele

Link:  Indigenous Resilience, by Michalyn Steele

Link: Supreme Court spurns Native American religious claim over copper mine on sacred land, by Lawrence Hurley

Link: Native American Rights Fund

Email the Show: Podcast@ACSLaw.org