ABSTRACT
The religious systems and practices of the indigenous peoples of California have suffered numerous detrimental consequences of colonization and hegemony of Western civilization since the time of effective contact in 1769. Indigenous religious observance endured the initial onslaught of the zealous missionary fathers, the initial colonists in California who made a concerted, proselytizing effort, aimed directly at converting the native people to Christianity through agricultural labor in the missions and intended to obliterate local, pagan religious expressions. The California peoples who survived proved to be resistant to the numerous attempts to force them to relinquish cultural and religious traditions. Some of the regions of strongest persistence are, not surprisingly, in rural areas, where the people live within their ancestral territories and thus have access to their traditional resources, including both materials and, even more importantly, their sacred landscapes. In many cases, these traditional lands are under the jurisdiction of federal and state land management agencies (for example, the Forest Service, the National Park Service, etc.), who, according to public law, must grant Native Americans access to their religious sites and protect those opportunities for the practice of native religion. These lands, however, are also subject to the demands of competing interests, such as lumber companies, ski resort development projects, hydroelectric-generation construction, and “New Age” religions – the whole gamut of modern society.
