Author Meets Critics: Dana Lloyd’s: Land is Kin: Sovereignty, Religious Freedom, and Indigenous Sacred Sites (University Press of Kansas, 2024)

This panel brings together scholars of religion and Indigenous studies to respond to Dana Lloyd’s book Land is Kin: Sovereignty, Religious Freedom, and Indigenous Sacred Site. Here, Lloyd argues that while the struggle between Native American sovereignty and American courts involves religion and religious freedom, these discourses often obscure what is at stake in land dispute cases between Indigenous people and settler courts. In truth, at least from the perspective of empire and settler courts, the struggle is more about land—about whether the land is property of the federal government or something sacred or religious to Native people. For this reason, a move beyond “religious freedom” and even “rights” language may be necessary in achieving justice for Native people seeking their right to self-sovereignty. Our panel aims to critically discuss the implications of Lloyd’s argument for religious freedom and rights discourses, law, future Native sovereignty efforts, and resistance to empire.