Alanna Dailey - Home Place Film

American Indian Film: Choice
In class watched a film on Native American and the importance of location. The film showed how modern society is interfering with traditional American Indian beliefs and sacred grounds. For instance, companies are bulldozing mountains, which house sacred sites and shrines, in order to extract mineral to make cement. I was fascinated by the issue regarding Mato Tipila. Mato Tipila has been sacred to the Lakota people for hundreds of years. In recent years, however, Mato Tipila has become a famous site for rock climbing. The Lakota believe that it is disrespectful to allow others to scrape and scar the tower with carabiners and other climbing equipment. They equate this to somebody climbing on the outside of a church. The climbers, on the other hand, state that placing a ban on climbing would be like prevent them from going to church.
Herein lays the problem: one group finds the physical land sacred and the other group finds the act of climbing sacred. Now the climbers could easily climb in a difference location, but some still refuse to do so. This suggests that Mato Tipila is what draws them to climb. Perhaps Americans also think that the physical Mato Tiplia is sacred, but they do not know how to respond to its sacredness and therefore respond with climbing.
In regard to the government not places a ban on climbing, I think of the issue from a sociological perspective. Conflict theory is often used to explain why certain groups are disadvantaged is society. From the first appearance of Europeans to current times, authority leaders have found ways to keep American Indians in inferior positions. Due to this history, the Lakota are powerless to enforce the ban on climbing Mato Tipila. For this perspective, ignoring the Lakota request for a ban is a way to make a profit and keep the minority group in an inferior position. Regardless of conflict theory, Mato Tipila is a location that calls to all people in which they come in contact with the sacred.