Built on a colonial discourse of justifiable Christian conquest, United States federal Indian law and policies have specifically targeted American Indian religious practices as a way to assimilate American Indians into the dominant colonizing culture and to undermine tribal sovereignty. Federal policies throughout colonization and into the present have drastically swung between denying American Indian religious practice and allowing for it under federal control, creating a confusing string of conflicting precedent. Although the worst of these practices has largely been abandoned, the paternalism of the United States government continues today with the creation and oversight of a permit system, which regulates the use and possession of bald and golden eagle feathers and parts (hereafter “eagles”). This article explores the history of federal policies aimed at American Indian religious practices to demonstrate the ways in which American Indian religious freedom law has been built on precedent and changing policies. I examine the function and regulations of the eagle permit process to situate it within recent challenges to its constitutionality using the First Amendment and the Religious Freedom Restoration Act (RFRA). In doing so, I outline the benefits and pitfalls of pursuing such challenges in the United States Supreme Court. Looking at the success of tribe-to-administrative agency negotiations, this article highlights the 2018 petition to Fish and Wildlife Services as an alternative method to pursuing American Indian religious freedom by accessing eagle parts.

Recently, as performing land acknowledgments within activist and academic communities grows in popularity, scholars are beginning to critically engage with their purpose and production. While the development of these discussions in university settings demonstrates a beneficial turn toward working with and interest in Indigenous communities, as well as the academy’s recognition of its complicity in ongoing settler colonization, it is important to reflect on these practices now, at this moment. Exploring recent critiques of land acknowledgments, we demonstrate that contemporary land acknowledgments maintain Western conceptions of land by focusing on the people as if they are divorced from it. This article argues, utilizing the peoplehood matrix, that land and people are inexorably linked in Indigenous ontologies, in an equal relationship, yet the form of current land acknowledgments often separates the people from their land in conformity with Western ideas of land ownership and history. We maintain that it is crucial in creating and performing land acknowledgments to remember the relationality between Indigenous peoples and the land.