Sacred places: Cultural and existential transitions

This chapter summarises the main themes and outcomes of case studies in Sacred Places in the Arctic and Beyond: Cultural and Existential Transitions and integrates them with ideas from cultural ecology and legal pluralism into a framework to inform future policy about governance and the management of sacred places. Case studies from the Arctic regions of Fennoscandia and Siberia are presented in four chapters, and four more chapters widen the geographical coverage to include case studies from North America, South America, Africa, and Europe. These chapters describe the cultural contexts and Indigenous cosmologies of sacred places in their respective regions. They raise issues of access to sacred places, destruction, and disruption caused by extractive industries and tourism, and the implications of these challenges for management. The case for policy reappraisals is made in four chapters in the final part of this book. They address the problem of how Western-orientated discourses and organisational structures frame legislation about, and management of, sacred places in ways which are seldom compatible with how Indigenous People understand these places and engage with them.