VIDEO: Watch and Listen to Sattitla Advocate Radley Davis

From our partners and allies at the Native American Rights Fund and Johns Hopkins Center for Indigenous Health:

How do Native peoples protect and gain access to sacred places today? Who needs to be invited into decisionmaking to help find solutions?

Radley Davis (Pit River) shares his peoples' story of the need and work to protect and restore access to one of their sacred places: Sáttítla, known in English today as Medicine Lake.

In the areas now known as California and Oregon, the Pit River peoples have been divided into several Tribal Nations. They remain united in their goal to find allies and create dialogues that will benefit a place critical to their communities' public health and cultural survival.

To gain a snapshot of issues and solutions encountered by sacred place advocates like Davis and the Pit River peoples, the Native American Rights Fund and the John Hopkins Center for Indigenous Health convened the Sacred Places and Public Health think tank. The event brought together Davis and other cultural activists with public health experts to share perspectives and brainstorm issues and solutions.

Watch more of the video series,  Access to and Protection of Sacred Places for Public Health