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Sacred Lands in Wyoming

Using the following links as suggestive leads, learn more about Wyoming’s Sacred Lands by focusing on three sites found in Northwest Wyoming: Bear’s Den, Medicine Wheel, and Medicine Lodge. Choose at least one of the sites, conduct additional research if needed, and compose a thoughtful discussion post.
Contemplate why the confrontation between “land is sacred” with “manifest destiny” might best be understood as a religious conflict of competing cosmologies. If so, does that mean that “property”–the Western designation of land as a commodity that can be owned–is sacred to the cosmology of the conquering, settler traditions?

1. Bear’s Den/ Bear’s Lodge/ Bear’s Tipi/ A.K.A. Devil’s Tower

“Sacred Claims” by Daniel Kraker ( http://www.hcn.org/servlets/hcn.Article?article_id=15907 )

Paul Chaat Smith, “How do you define sacred?” (http://www.hcn.org/servlets/hcn.Article?article_id=3427 ).

http://www.sacredland.org/in-the-light-of-reverence-devils-tower/
http://www.bc.edu/bc_org/avp/law/lwsch/journals/bcealr/27_2/04_TXT.htm

2. Medicine Wheel
http://www.sacredland.org/medicine-wheel

http://www.indian-affairs.org/programs/aaia_sacred_places.htm

http://www.manataka.org/page1899.html

3. Medicine Lodge

They tend to treat this site largely in terms of tourism rather than sacred lands issues. At what point does the tourism of one people become a kind of religious pilgrimage and what is the draw to the Indigenous rock art and historical presence–at what point does the attraction suggest a hunger by the dominant culture to be near the sacred places of the Indigenous people?

http://wyoparks.state.wy.us/Site/SiteInfo.asp?siteID=21