November 30, 1987
In Lyng v. Northwest Indian CPA (Cemetery Protective Association), by a 5-3 vote, the Supreme Court allowed the US Forest Service to build a road through sacred Indian lands (the Chimney Rock area of the Six Rivers National Forest in the NW corner of California.) The Court acknowledged that the road will in fact be devastating to their religious practice, but Justice Sandra Day O’Conner writes in the majority opinion: “Whatever rights the Indians my have to the use of the area, however, those rights do not divest the Government of its right to use what is, after all, its land.”
