Land Is Kin

Dana Lloyd is assistant professor of Global Interdisciplinary Studies at Villanova University.

• AcknowledgmentsForeword by Judge Abby AbinantiIntroduction: The High Country1. Land as Home in the G-O Road Trial2. Land as Property in the Lyng Decision3. Land as Sacred in Justice Brennan’s Dissent4. Land as Wild in the California Wilderness Act5. Land as Kin in the Klamath River ResolutionConclusion: Land as SovereignNotesBibliographyIndex

"Land is Kin challenges us with some welcomed, insightful, and, at times, creative analytical work. Scholars of Indigenous religious freedom will recognize the important contributions this book makes to our field."—Journal of Church and State"Despite all the setbacks, the story Lloyd tells in this important book is not one of unremitting gloom. It radiates with the hope of the Indigenous nations who have never stopped fighting for the High Country as both home and kin."—Journal for the Study of Religion, Nature, and Culture"Combining a clear understanding of legal doctrine but embedded in humanities scholarship that emphasises law as storytelling, Land is Kin does not only demonstrate the complexity of land but outlines a potential path forward."—Sydney Law Review"The work is richly insightful, and Lloyd embraces every complexity and potential contradiction in her argument. Land is Kin brilliantly exposes the limits of the First Amendment and calls on future scholars, activists, and allies to think beyond its confines."—Reading Religion"Until the tired and faulty precedent of Lyng is dethroned, Indigenous sacred sites in the United States will continue to suffer the consequences of being treated as mere property. Dana Lloyd challenges this paradigm in Land Is Kin by looking backward and forward, asking how such a problematic framing of sacred land as government property came to be. She explores how this knotty tangle might be undone in a way that foregrounds Indigenous sovereignty, focusing on kinship with the land and the relationship work such intimacy demands. This important book will be compelling to readers across several fields—Native American and Indigenous studies, religious studies, and law—and to communities on the ground seeking fresh insights for gaining protection of their sacred places as relatives."—Greg Johnson, professor, Department of Religious Studies at University of California, Santa Barbara, and author of Sacred Claims: Repatriation and Living Tradition"This book is as refreshing as it is lucid. Where most observers consider a 1988 loss before the Supreme Court to be the end of the story for Native American sacred place protection in the land of religious freedom, Dana Lloyd presses through and beyond the language of religious freedom or wilderness to hear how Yurok, Karuk, and Tolowa peoples themselves assert their rights and responsibilities to land as kin."—Michael McNally, professor of religion, Carleton College, and author of Defend the Sacred: Native American Religious Freedom beyond the First Amendment"Dana Lloyd has written an important book. Ever since the Supreme Court decided the Lyng case in 1988, it has been used to severely limit and almost completely erase Indigenous land-based religious rights. Lloyd provides a new critique and analysis on how to understand and work around Lyng."—Robert J. Miller, coauthor of A Promise Kept: The Muscogee (Creek) Nation and McGirt v. Oklahoma