This three-essay booklet by Dr. Rosita Worl, Dr. Thomas Thornton, and Dr. Chuck Smythe document the historic and decades-long battle to protect Juneau’s Indian Point, near Auke Bay, Alaska, considered to be a sacred site to Native people. 

National Recognition of the Traditional Cultural Significance of X'unáx̱i (Indian Point) traces the saga that began in 1959 with a proposal to develop the site and culminated in 2016, when SHI prevailed in an effort to list it the National Register of Historic Places, making it the first traditional cultural property in Southeast Alaska to be placed on the register.

The case offers a clear lesson that can be learned or affirmed: that we as Native Americans view the protection of our sacred sites as essential, and we will avail ourselves of every mechanism to shelter them, wrote SHI President Rosita Worl, Ph.D.

“We are not apologetic that our cultural beliefs may conflict with Western values or stand in the way of progress or the construction of a new facility. Our cultural values must be interpreted and applied on their own merit and not defined or structured in the context of national laws or needs,” she wrote.