Protecting Sacred Sites

Land Is Kin: Sovereignty, Religious Freedom, and Indigenous Sacred Sites by Dana Lloyd

Abstract

When Indigenous nations’ sacred and cultural sites are threatened, legal disputes often frame land in one of two ways: either land is sacred, or it is property. In Land Is Kin, Dana Lloyd argues that this positioning is inadequate. Not only does it facilitate the damage and destruction of sacred sites, but it fails to appreciate the familial responsibilities we all have to Country. In this review essay, I outline Lloyd’s argument and suggest that emerging treaty processes in Australia offer one way to ground a deeper appreciation of land within Australian law and society.