YAKIMA, Wash. -- A federal judge has handed a defeat to tribal members who say a sacred site was destroyed to expand a highway near Oregon’s Mount Hood.
The elders from Yakama Nation and the Confederated Tribes of Grande Ronde claim the Federal Highway Administration violated the Religious Freedom Restoration Act. They said the government in 2008 could have widened the road without bulldozing a site that included a stone altar and medicinal plants.
Yakama Nation tribal members Wilbur Slockish Jr. and Johnny Jackson were among several who filed the lawsuit in U.S. District Court in Portland, arguing the federal government violated the Religious Freedom and Restoration Act when it allowed the Oregon Department of Transportation to bulldoze the site, remove trees and install a massive earthen berm and a guardrail blocking access.
Although the area isn’t on the Yakama reservation, it’s within the tribe’s ceded area, where tribal members retain traditional rights to hunt, fish, gather foods and conduct spiritual practices.
Slockish and Jackson are descendants of chiefs of the Klickitat and Cascade bands, which are among the 14 tribes that constitute the Yakima Nation.
But Magistrate Judge Youlee Yim You ruled that tribal members failed to show that the project substantially burdened their right to practice religion.
Transportation officials widened U.S. Highway 26 after receiving complaints about a dangerous stretch east of Portland.
Tribal leaders said in a statement Monday they plan to appeal.