What Is "Box Mentality"?

Over the past week, I’ve continued working through court cases, and they’ve all been regarding sacred land issues. I continue to be surprised at the decisions and the reasoning within these cases. With each decision, I try to look at both sides of the issue, and yet I continually find myself disagreeing with the courts’ reasoning. One case I read, a fairly long one, was Wilson v Block from the Ninth Circuit in 1983.

In Wilson v Block, there was a dispute over the expansion of the Snow Bowl ski area because it is located on the San Francisco Peaks, which are very sacred to the Hopi and Navajo. I’ll go into the decision in more depth in my final paper, but I ran into the same issues that I had struggled with in previous cases I read. The court decision didn’t fully take the claims seriously, and even though there was a much greater level of respect than I had found in previous cases, it ultimately ran into the issue of “box mentality” as I like to call it.

“Box mentality” is the term that I have come up with for what I have identified within these court decisions. It is the phenomenon where decisions, opinions, and language of the court is influenced by the lack of real understanding of Native American religion and spirituality and the fact that it does not fit in the confines of Western religion. There is an inability (or refusal) to look outside of the traditional confines of religion, to bend the legal box we have created for religious issues. This is one of, if not the most fundamental problem with our legal reasoning with regards to Native American religious freedom issues. There is such a limited perspective the courts are willing to take.

This is not nearly the only underlying issue, however it would take much more than a blog post to explain all of what I’ve found. That’s what the final paper is for though, thankfully.

This week I also read more of the book, Like a Loaded Weapon, I have slowly been working my way through. I struggle partially with the way the author writes about some of the topics, however I reached a section where I am right with him. He first discusses the racist language and ideas held about different groups within our country, and he then segues into discussing the impact and importance of racist language and ideas in court cases, using Dred Scott and Korematsu. I am interested to see where he goes with this about American Indian cases.

As I continue into more research, I also have to start pulling my thoughts together for my final paper. Taking notes on all that I’ve read and researched will help remember what points I want to make, but there is a lot to talk about for this topic. Writing this paper will be no easy task. Regardless, I am both frustrated with what I read and loving this project; it’s incredibly interesting and I’m glad I am exploring this realm I did not know much about.

#frustration #LikeaLoadedWeapon #reading #1900s #racism #religiousfreedom #courtcases #NativeAmerican #boxmentality