By Sufferance, Not by Right: Indigenous Spirituality and Religious Freedom in Australia

Jeremy Patrick is a senior lecturer at the University of Southern Queensland School of Law and Justice. This post is based on a presentation given at the ICLRS 32nd Annual International Law and Religion Symposium, 7 October 2025.

The post is the part of the Religious Freedom and Indigenous Rights series

Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander communities have maintained a deep spiritual connection to the land and waterways of what we now call Australia for at least 65,000 years.[1] Although it is impossible to do justice to the importance and complexity of the legal protection of Indigenous spirituality in Australia, the short overview that follows is intended to articulate a key, if unfortunate, thesis: there is little in the way of constitutional safeguards for the religious freedom of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islanders. Instead, such protections must come through legislative and regulatory instruments, which can be, and sometimes are, withdrawn by the federal and state governments due to political considerations. As we will see, the precarious nature of these protections, which can ebb and flow with the political winds, are an unfortunate legacy of decades of unduly narrow interpretations of the Australian Constitution.

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Recent Developments in U.S. Free Exercise Jurisprudence for Native American Religion

Michalyn Steele is Marion G. Romney Professor of Law at the J. Reuben Clark Law School, Brigham Young University. This post is based on a presentation given at the ICLRS 32nd Annual International Law and Religion Symposium, 6 October 2025.

The post is the part of the Religious Freedom and Indigenous Rights series

Several recent unpublished U.S. federal court opinions have responded to claims under the Religious Land Use and Institutionalized Persons Act (RLUIPA) and the U.S. Constitution’s Free Exercise Clause by incarcerated Native American practitioners. The RLUIPA, enacted by Congress in 2000, provides that governments may not impose a substantial burden on the religious exercise of persons confined to institutions unless the government can demonstrate that the burden is in furtherance of a compelling governmental interest and is narrowly tailored to further that interest. Incarcerated practitioners of Native American religion have been able to get access to sweat lodges and other aspects of Native religious practice and to have certain religious practices accommodated under the law.

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“Sacred Stuff”: Indigenous Religions in Post-Apartheid South Africa

Christine M. Venter is a teaching professor and an affiliate in the Global Human Rights Clinic at Notre Dame Law School and is an affiliated faculty in the Gender Studies Program at the University of Notre Dame. This post is based on her presentation at the ICLRS 32nd Annual International Law and Religion Symposium, 7 October 2025, at Brigham Young University’s J. Reuben Clark Law School.

The post is the part of the Religious Freedom and Indigenous Rights series

A nation, David Chidester tells us, is “made out of sacred stuff.” Nowhere is that more apparent than when examining the rich religious diversity of South Africa. According to the most recent (2022) South African census figures, approximately 73% of the population identifies as Christian, 14% report affiliation with “unspecified” religions, while affiliates of African Indigenous Religions (AIRs) make up 7% of the population. Jews, Muslims, Hindus, and Bahá’ís respectively account for 1–2% or less of the population. Although the census has been criticized for its methodology and questionable accuracy, it provides some insight into the myriad religions that comprise the South African population. However, it fails to fully capture the fact that some adherents of AIRs combine indigenous beliefs and practices with those of Christian or other major religions, seeing no incompatibility between the two.

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