Do Sacred Plants Have Standing? Religious Freedom of Expression & Biocultural Recovery of Sacred & Ceremonial Plants
Abstract
Indigenous communities and other traditional ethnic enclaves have long integrated sacred and ceremonial plants into their spiritual traditions, but the affirmation of their legal rights to protect and maintain cultural access to such plants has been fraught with outdated conceptions of what "religion" and "legitimate practice of spiritual traditions" entails, especially with respect to plants and animals used in ceremonies and their legal status as "sacred persons". Case studies from the contested U.S.-Mexico border and war-torn Middle East will suggest some ways that public perception and case law are evolving to accommodate these Indigenous rights more fully.
About the Speaker
Gary Nabhan PhD is a contemplative desert ecologist and Franciscan Brother. He founded the Sacred Plants Biocultural Recovery Initiative and worked with indigenous spiritual leaders and elected officials to declare the saguaro cactus as a sacred sentient being with legal protection on 100,000 ha of Sonoran Desert lands. He is author, Coauthor or editor of 35 books in 6 languages and over 150 scholarly articles and book chapters.
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About People, Plants and the Law Online Lecture Series
The People, Plants, and the Law lecture series explores the legal and lively entanglements of human and botanical worlds.
Today people engage with and relate to plants in diverse and sometimes divergent ways. Seeds—and the plants that they produce—may be receptacles of memory, sacred forms of sustenance, or sites of resistance in struggles over food sovereignty. Simultaneously, they may be repositories of gene sequences, Indigenous knowledge, bulk commodities, or key components of economic development projects and food security programs.
This lecture series explores the special role of the law in shaping these different engagements, whether in farmers’ fields, scientific laboratories, international markets, or elsewhere.
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