INDIGENOUS SACRED SITES UNDER THREAT:
Inside the Grassroots Battles Against Corporate Developers and Government Infrastructure
By Robert Rosa
DELTONA, FL — The ongoing corporate, federal, and state-backed assaults on Indigenous sacred sites across North America are not isolated incidents of modern development. Instead, they represent the latest chapter in an unbroken, centuries-old history of colonial desecration. From the ancient burial grounds of Florida to the sacred peaks of the Dakotas, tribal nations, grassroots organizers, and allies are locked in high-stakes standoffs against the exact same systemic disregard that has targeted their ancestral lands since the dawn of colonization—a reality where Indigenous spaces have never been truly honored, respected, or left in peace.
In Florida, this generational disrespect is playing out through the twin engines of luxury real estate, federal authority, and state authority, triggering fierce resistance from traditional leaders and grassroots organizations. In downtown Miami, the Related Group continues construction on luxury high-rises directly over a 2,000-year-old Tequesta village marketplace and ancestral burial site. Treating a profound cultural sanctuary as mere real estate, developers have used corporate permits and zoning loopholes to dig into the earth, drawing sharp condemnation from local water protectors and tribal historians. Deeper in the state, the government utilized emergency powers to seize an almost abandoned airfield within the Big Cypress National Preserve to build a temporary migrant detention camp. For the Miccosukee Tribe and the Seminole Tribe of Florida’s Historic Preservation Officers, this unilateral seizure of their Everglades homelands is a direct continuation of historical government overreach that completely ignores tribal sovereignty and the sacredness of the land.
Frontline organizations like the American Indian Movement (AIM) of Florida, as well as members of federally recognized tribal members, are weaponizing both public protest and federal law to force accountability. Spearheaded by AIM members Sheridan Murphy and Robert Rosa and allies, the movement has been a vocal force demanding strict compliance under the Native American Graves Protection and Repatriation Act (NAGPRA). These advocates are actively confronting commercial developers at construction gates, challenging local historic review boards to protect ancient mounds in places like Jupiter and Micanopy, and ensuring that urban development's cannot erase or unceremoniously disperse unearthed ancestral remains in silence.
The same pattern of continuous desecration fractures the landscape of the Dakotas, where the earth is routinely treated as a resource to be hollowed out rather than as something to be protected. In South Dakota’s Black Hills—the spiritual heart of the Lakota, Dakota, and Nakota nations—a multi-tribal coalition of Oceti Šakówiŋ (Seven Council Fires) chairpersons recently forced a temporary retreat of a corporate graphite mining project near the sacred ceremonial site of Pe' Sla. Grassroots organizations like the NDN Collective, spearheaded by leaders like Wizipan Garriott and Angel White Eyes, successfully organized land defense on the ground, mobilizing community members to physically occupy corporate drill pads until operations were paused. Yet, even as one corporate entity steps back, federal oversight agencies have pushed forward infrastructure approvals for uranium mining in the surrounding basin. This relentless push for extraction, alongside the ongoing operation and legal battles over the Dakota Access Pipeline corridor, reinforces the painful reality that treaty rights and the safety of Indigenous water supplies remain secondary to corporate energy demands.
This refusal to honor sacred geography extends across the continent, exposing a deep-seated institutional blindness to Indigenous spirituality. In the Southwest, shifts in federal policy have actively targeted the dismantling of a crucial 10-mile oil and gas leasing buffer zone around New Mexico's Greater Chaco Cultural Landscape, opening 90 percent of the surrounding federal land to fracking. In Arizona, the San Carlos Apache Tribe’s multi-year battle to save Oak Flat—a holy ceremonial site—suffered a severe blow when the U.S. Supreme Court declined to block a federal land transfer to international copper mining conglomerates. Despite the legal setbacks, Apache Stronghold founder Wendsler Nosie Sr. and tribal Chairman Terry Rambler continue to lead prayer runs and advocate for legislative intervention to prevent the holy site from being swallowed by a corporate mine. Meanwhile, along the U.S.–Mexico border, Kumeyaay Nation leaders like Norma Meza Calles continue to organize against federal contractors who use dynamite and heavy machinery on the sacred slopes of Kuuchamaa Mountain.
For Indigenous peoples, these current battlegrounds are part of a continuous timeline of erasure. The actors have changed from frontier military forces to corporate boards and bulldozers, but the underlying philosophy remains identical. By framing these developments not as progress, but as a perpetuation of historical desecration, tribal leaders and water protectors emphasize that the fight is for survival itself—a demand that the sacredness of their lands finally be recognized and respected after centuries of violation.