| By Riley Ehlert and Amelie Lock* For many Americans, Native sacred places are treated as distant relics of the past — isolated cliff dwellings, famous landmarks, or sites featured in tourism campaigns and history textbooks. This narrow understanding obscures a much deeper truth: Native sacred places exist throughout the United States, including within cities, suburbs, farmland, forests, waterways, and neighborhoods that millions of people move through every day without recognizing what lives under their feet. |  |
This invisibility is not accidental. It is the direct result of centuries of colonization, forced removal, historical erasure, and educational systems that have minimized or excluded Indigenous perspectives. Across the country, sacred Indigenous landscapes remain hidden in plain sight, not because they lack importance, but because dominant American narratives have long refused to acknowledge Native Peoples as living Nations with enduring relationships to their Ancestral lands that they were put here to protect.
For Native Nations, sacred places are not simply archaeological sites or historical landmarks. They are living cultural landscapes tied to ceremony, identity, language, governance, kinship, and spirituality. These living places connect past, present, and future generations. They are places of prayer, responsibility, memory, and belonging. Many continue to be actively used and protected by Native Nations today.
Too often, American society recognizes sacredness only when it resembles Western religious traditions — churches, cathedrals, temples, cemeteries, or monuments built from stone and visible architecture. Indigenous sacred relationships to mountains, springs, rivers, burial grounds, migration routes, and ceremonial landscapes have historically been dismissed because they do not conform to colonial definitions of religion or land ownership. Even public lands and national parks are frequently framed through narratives of “discovery” and conservation that erase the Native Peoples who have stewarded those lands for thousands of years.
This framework perpetuates the dangerous misconception that Indigenous sacred geography is rare or confined to a handful of famous locations. In reality, Native sacred places exist across the entire continent.
The Legacy of Erasure
The history of Native sacred lands in the United States cannot be separated from the colonial ideologies that shaped American expansion. Racism and settler colonialism created systems that treated Indigenous Peoples as obstacles to development rather than sovereign Nations with inherent rights and responsibilities to their homelands.
These beliefs influenced federal policy, land development, archaeology, education, and popular culture. Sacred Indigenous sites were mined, flooded, excavated, looted, or destroyed in the name of expansion and economic growth. Burial grounds and ceremonial spaces were treated as scientific curiosities or real estate opportunities rather than protected cultural and spiritual places.
Throughout the nineteenth century, Indigenous burial mounds and ceremonial earthworks across the Mississippi and Ohio River valleys were routinely excavated or flattened for agriculture and urban development. Rather than acknowledging the sophisticated civilizations built by Native Peoples, many white settlers promoted the racist “Mound Builder Myth” — the false theory that a vanished, supposedly more “civilized” race had constructed the mounds before Native Nations arrived. This narrative was used to justify the seizure of Indigenous lands and erase Native achievement from American history.
The effects of this erasure continue today. Many schools still teach westward expansion primarily through the lens of exploration and settlement while failing to address the displacement of Native Nations, the destruction of sacred places, and the ongoing survival of Indigenous Peoples. As a result, generations of Americans have grown up with little understanding of the sacred landscapes that surround them.
Sacred Places in Missouri: Hidden in Plain Sight
Missouri illustrates how Indigenous sacred geography can be rendered nearly invisible in public memory despite thousands of years of Native history. Today, Missouri is rarely recognized nationally as a place deeply connected to Native sacred landscapes. Yet long before American expansion, the region was home to thriving Nations whose cultural and spiritual connections to the land continue today.
Students often learn about the Lewis and Clark expedition as a story of American exploration while Native participation, knowledge, and perspectives receive little attention. The result is a historical narrative that centers colonization while minimizing Indigenous presence. A major reason this history is overlooked is because Native Nations were forcibly removed from Missouri during the nineteenth century through federal relocation policies and violent displacement. Many Americans mistakenly interpret the absence of federally recognized Nations in Missouri today as evidence that Native Peoples no longer have connections to the region. In reality, removal policies disrupted visibility — not Indigenous identity, history, or responsibility to the land.
One important sacred site in Missouri is Sugarloaf Mound in St. Louis, the last remaining mound of the many that once existed in the city. Indigenous mounds are human-made earth structures created for ceremony, burial, gathering, governance, and spiritual purposes. They remain sacred to many Native Nations because they honor Ancestors and embody enduring relationships with the land.
For years, residential structures sat atop Sugarloaf Mound. In 2009, the Osage Nation purchased the property containing the mound in order to protect and preserve the site. Preservation efforts have continued, including the removal of deteriorating structures and plans for future educational and interpretive work. Sugarloaf Mound serves as a reminder that Native sacred places persist even in heavily urbanized environments.
Sacred Places in California: Survival Amid Urban Development
California is home to 109 federally recognized Native Nations, as well as many nonrecognized Tribes, Bands and Communities that remain unrecognized by the federal government despite their enduring cultural presence. Across the state, sacred places continue to face threats from development, exclusion, and lack of recognition. One important site is Kuruvungna Sacred Springs, located within what is now Los Angeles.
Kuruvungna Sacred Springs are connected to the Tongva people, the original inhabitants of the region. Also known as Tongva Sacred Springs, the site is now located on the grounds of University High School and is owned by the Los Angeles Unified School District while being managed through stewardship efforts led by the Gabrielino-Tongva Springs Foundation. The reality that Tongva Peoples must work within systems that do not fully recognize their sovereignty over Ancestral sacred lands reflects broader injustices faced by many Native Nations across the country.
Kuruvungna was once part of a Tongva village whose name translates roughly to “a place where we gather in the sun.” Like many Native Nations in California, the Tongva were subjected to forced relocation and missionization under Spanish colonization, including removal to the San Gabriel Mission.
Despite these histories, preservation and restoration efforts at Kuruvungna demonstrate the resilience of Native Peoples and the importance of collaborative stewardship. Community-led restoration has included the removal of invasive species, reintroduction of native plants, reconstruction of a traditional Tongva kiiy (dwelling), educational programming, gardens, and cultural revitalization efforts. The site continues to educate visitors about Indigenous history, environmental stewardship, and the ongoing presence of Tongva Peoples.
Sacred Places and Environmental Stewardship
Native sacred places are not only culturally significant — they are also deeply connected to environmental protection and ecological sustainability. For many Native Nations, land is not property to be exploited for profit. Land is a living relative with whom people maintain reciprocal responsibilities. Sacred places are tied to water systems, plant life, migration patterns, biodiversity, and ecological balance developed through generations of stewardship.
This understanding challenges dominant Western frameworks that separate spirituality from environmental protection. Indigenous relationships to land recognize that cultural survival and ecological health are inseparable.
The protection of sacred places often safeguards critical natural resources including clean water, wildlife habitats, medicinal plants, and healthy ecosystems. At Kuruvungna Sacred Springs, for example, the springs continue to produce tens of thousands of gallons of freshwater daily despite intense urbanization surrounding the site. You can drink the water directly from the spring in the middle of Los Angeles!
As climate change, resource extraction, and development projects increasingly threaten Indigenous lands, Native Nations will continue to fight to protect sacred places for future generations. In this time of political unrest, however, many Native Nations do not have the capacity to fight against the onslaught of funding cuts, increased development, lack of healthcare, housing and opportunities to build economies, and to fight against the attack of their ecosystems, lands and sacred places
Recognition Must Lead to Action
Recognition alone is not enough. Protecting Native sacred places requires sustained public education, legal protections, meaningful consultation with Native Nations, and respect for Indigenous sovereignty. And, a lot of lawyers and organizing.
Americans must move beyond viewing Native Peoples as figures confined to the past. Indigenous Nations remain vibrant, sovereign and resilient, with ongoing responsibilities to their sacred places and homelands. Sacred landscapes are not isolated historical artifacts; they are part of living cultures that continue today.
Understanding Native sacred places begins with recognizing that these lands may exist in our own communities, often hidden beneath highways, neighborhoods, schools, parks, and commercial development. The land beneath our feet holds histories, responsibilities, and relationships that long predate the United States.
Educational institutions, government agencies, developers, and the public all have a responsibility to learn these histories and support Native-led preservation efforts.
Some helpful educational resources include:
Across the United States, Native sacred places continue to face threats from extractive industries, infrastructure projects, looting, and development driven by profit rather than environmental and cultural responsibility. Protecting these places requires more than acknowledgment — it requires education, advocacy, partnership with Native Nations, and long-term commitment to Indigenous rights and sovereignty.
Native sacred places are everywhere. The question is whether American society is finally willing to see them.
*Riley Ehlert is a citizen of the Muscogee Nation and a current high school junior in Los Angeles. In addition to being involved in various school sports and clubs, Riley is a member of Sacred Path Indigenous Wellness Center’s Indigenous Youth Advisory Council and the Emerging Organizers Cohort for California Native Vote Project. She is also a volunteer columnist for the Indigenous Foundation. Involvement with local Native Nations has allowed her to gain experience in community organizing and advocacy. She is passionate about spreading awareness regarding various issues affecting Native Nations. In doing so, she hopes to deepen her own understanding and strengthen her cultural connection.
Amelie Lock is a high school junior in St. Louis, Missouri with interests in Native studies. Originally from New York City, Amelie has a strong passion for theater and the arts and has performed nationally since the age of 10. Last summer, she studied the American Enlightenment at Stanford under Professor Caroline Winterer, where she developed an interest in Native arts. She currently serves as an Ambassador for Arts Education in the state of Missouri and is interested in using advocacy and storytelling to support the work of Association on American Indian Affairs.
Sugarloaf mound picture Credit: Brian Munoz
Credit for Karuvungna Springs pictures: Evan Meyer
https://www.2023.nativeplantgardentour.org/17-kuruvungna-and-the-tongva-sacred-springs/
For Native Nations, sacred places are not simply archaeological sites or historical landmarks. They are living cultural landscapes tied to ceremony, identity, language, governance, kinship, and spirituality. These living places connect past, present, and future generations. They are places of prayer, responsibility, memory, and belonging. Many continue to be actively used and protected by Native Nations today.
Too often, American society recognizes sacredness only when it resembles Western religious traditions — churches, cathedrals, temples, cemeteries, or monuments built from stone and visible architecture. Indigenous sacred relationships to mountains, springs, rivers, burial grounds, migration routes, and ceremonial landscapes have historically been dismissed because they do not conform to colonial definitions of religion or land ownership. Even public lands and national parks are frequently framed through narratives of “discovery” and conservation that erase the Native Peoples who have stewarded those lands for thousands of years.
This framework perpetuates the dangerous misconception that Indigenous sacred geography is rare or confined to a handful of famous locations. In reality, Native sacred places exist across the entire continent.
The Legacy of Erasure
The history of Native sacred lands in the United States cannot be separated from the colonial ideologies that shaped American expansion. Racism and settler colonialism created systems that treated Indigenous Peoples as obstacles to development rather than sovereign Nations with inherent rights and responsibilities to their homelands.
These beliefs influenced federal policy, land development, archaeology, education, and popular culture. Sacred Indigenous sites were mined, flooded, excavated, looted, or destroyed in the name of expansion and economic growth. Burial grounds and ceremonial spaces were treated as scientific curiosities or real estate opportunities rather than protected cultural and spiritual places.
Throughout the nineteenth century, Indigenous burial mounds and ceremonial earthworks across the Mississippi and Ohio River valleys were routinely excavated or flattened for agriculture and urban development. Rather than acknowledging the sophisticated civilizations built by Native Peoples, many white settlers promoted the racist “Mound Builder Myth” — the false theory that a vanished, supposedly more “civilized” race had constructed the mounds before Native Nations arrived. This narrative was used to justify the seizure of Indigenous lands and erase Native achievement from American history.
The effects of this erasure continue today. Many schools still teach westward expansion primarily through the lens of exploration and settlement while failing to address the displacement of Native Nations, the destruction of sacred places, and the ongoing survival of Indigenous Peoples. As a result, generations of Americans have grown up with little understanding of the sacred landscapes that surround them.
Sacred Places in Missouri: Hidden in Plain Sight
Missouri illustrates how Indigenous sacred geography can be rendered nearly invisible in public memory despite thousands of years of Native history. Today, Missouri is rarely recognized nationally as a place deeply connected to Native sacred landscapes. Yet long before American expansion, the region was home to thriving Nations whose cultural and spiritual connections to the land continue today.
Students often learn about the Lewis and Clark expedition as a story of American exploration while Native participation, knowledge, and perspectives receive little attention. The result is a historical narrative that centers colonization while minimizing Indigenous presence. A major reason this history is overlooked is because Native Nations were forcibly removed from Missouri during the nineteenth century through federal relocation policies and violent displacement. Many Americans mistakenly interpret the absence of federally recognized Nations in Missouri today as evidence that Native Peoples no longer have connections to the region. In reality, removal policies disrupted visibility — not Indigenous identity, history, or responsibility to the land.
One important sacred site in Missouri is Sugarloaf Mound in St. Louis, the last remaining mound of the many that once existed in the city. Indigenous mounds are human-made earth structures created for ceremony, burial, gathering, governance, and spiritual purposes. They remain sacred to many Native Nations because they honor Ancestors and embody enduring relationships with the land.
For years, residential structures sat atop Sugarloaf Mound. In 2009, the Osage Nation purchased the property containing the mound in order to protect and preserve the site. Preservation efforts have continued, including the removal of deteriorating structures and plans for future educational and interpretive work. Sugarloaf Mound serves as a reminder that Native sacred places persist even in heavily urbanized environments.
Sacred Places in California: Survival Amid Urban Development
California is home to 109 federally recognized Native Nations, as well as many nonrecognized Tribes, Bands and Communities that remain unrecognized by the federal government despite their enduring cultural presence. Across the state, sacred places continue to face threats from development, exclusion, and lack of recognition. One important site is Kuruvungna Sacred Springs, located within what is now Los Angeles.
Kuruvungna Sacred Springs are connected to the Tongva people, the original inhabitants of the region. Also known as Tongva Sacred Springs, the site is now located on the grounds of University High School and is owned by the Los Angeles Unified School District while being managed through stewardship efforts led by the Gabrielino-Tongva Springs Foundation. The reality that Tongva Peoples must work within systems that do not fully recognize their sovereignty over Ancestral sacred lands reflects broader injustices faced by many Native Nations across the country.
Kuruvungna was once part of a Tongva village whose name translates roughly to “a place where we gather in the sun.” Like many Native Nations in California, the Tongva were subjected to forced relocation and missionization under Spanish colonization, including removal to the San Gabriel Mission.
Despite these histories, preservation and restoration efforts at Kuruvungna demonstrate the resilience of Native Peoples and the importance of collaborative stewardship. Community-led restoration has included the removal of invasive species, reintroduction of native plants, reconstruction of a traditional Tongva kiiy (dwelling), educational programming, gardens, and cultural revitalization efforts. The site continues to educate visitors about Indigenous history, environmental stewardship, and the ongoing presence of Tongva Peoples.
Sacred Places and Environmental Stewardship
Native sacred places are not only culturally significant — they are also deeply connected to environmental protection and ecological sustainability. For many Native Nations, land is not property to be exploited for profit. Land is a living relative with whom people maintain reciprocal responsibilities. Sacred places are tied to water systems, plant life, migration patterns, biodiversity, and ecological balance developed through generations of stewardship.
This understanding challenges dominant Western frameworks that separate spirituality from environmental protection. Indigenous relationships to land recognize that cultural survival and ecological health are inseparable.
The protection of sacred places often safeguards critical natural resources including clean water, wildlife habitats, medicinal plants, and healthy ecosystems. At Kuruvungna Sacred Springs, for example, the springs continue to produce tens of thousands of gallons of freshwater daily despite intense urbanization surrounding the site. You can drink the water directly from the spring in the middle of Los Angeles!
As climate change, resource extraction, and development projects increasingly threaten Indigenous lands, Native Nations will continue to fight to protect sacred places for future generations. In this time of political unrest, however, many Native Nations do not have the capacity to fight against the onslaught of funding cuts, increased development, lack of healthcare, housing and opportunities to build economies, and to fight against the attack of their ecosystems, lands and sacred places
Recognition Must Lead to Action
Recognition alone is not enough. Protecting Native sacred places requires sustained public education, legal protections, meaningful consultation with Native Nations, and respect for Indigenous sovereignty. And, a lot of lawyers and organizing.
Americans must move beyond viewing Native Peoples as figures confined to the past. Indigenous Nations remain vibrant, sovereign and resilient, with ongoing responsibilities to their sacred places and homelands. Sacred landscapes are not isolated historical artifacts; they are part of living cultures that continue today.
Understanding Native sacred places begins with recognizing that these lands may exist in our own communities, often hidden beneath highways, neighborhoods, schools, parks, and commercial development. The land beneath our feet holds histories, responsibilities, and relationships that long predate the United States.
Educational institutions, government agencies, developers, and the public all have a responsibility to learn these histories and support Native-led preservation efforts.
Some helpful educational resources include:
- Sacred Land Film Project Interactive Map: sacredland.org/map
- National Park Service American Indian Sites Guide:
nps.gov/subjects/travelamericancultures/amindsites
- American Indigenous Tourism Know Before You Go Guides:
americanindigenoustourism.org/know-before-you-go-guides
Across the United States, Native sacred places continue to face threats from extractive industries, infrastructure projects, looting, and development driven by profit rather than environmental and cultural responsibility. Protecting these places requires more than acknowledgment — it requires education, advocacy, partnership with Native Nations, and long-term commitment to Indigenous rights and sovereignty.
Native sacred places are everywhere. The question is whether American society is finally willing to see them.
*Riley Ehlert is a citizen of the Muscogee Nation and a current high school junior in Los Angeles. In addition to being involved in various school sports and clubs, Riley is a member of Sacred Path Indigenous Wellness Center’s Indigenous Youth Advisory Council and the Emerging Organizers Cohort for California Native Vote Project. She is also a volunteer columnist for the Indigenous Foundation. Involvement with local Native Nations has allowed her to gain experience in community organizing and advocacy. She is passionate about spreading awareness regarding various issues affecting Native Nations. In doing so, she hopes to deepen her own understanding and strengthen her cultural connection.
Amelie Lock is a high school junior in St. Louis, Missouri with interests in Native studies. Originally from New York City, Amelie has a strong passion for theater and the arts and has performed nationally since the age of 10. Last summer, she studied the American Enlightenment at Stanford under Professor Caroline Winterer, where she developed an interest in Native arts. She currently serves as an Ambassador for Arts Education in the state of Missouri and is interested in using advocacy and storytelling to support the work of Association on American Indian Affairs.
Sugarloaf mound picture Credit: Brian Munoz
Credit for Karuvungna Springs pictures: Evan Meyer
https://www.2023.nativeplantgardentour.org/17-kuruvungna-and-the-tongva-sacred-springs/
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