DENVER—The future of a Northern Arapaho man who shot a bald eagle for use in his tribe’s Sun Dance two years now rides on the eventual decision of a federal appeals court.
Winslow Friday, 23 of Ethete, Wyo., watched Monday as lawyers representing him and his tribe sparred with a lawyer from the U.S. Department of Justice before a panel of judges at 10th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in Denver.
The U.S. Department of Justice wants the appeals court to reinstate a criminal charge against Friday. If he’s convicted of illegally killing the bald eagle, he could be sentenced to up to a year in jail and fined $100,000.
The appeals court did not immediately issue a ruling on the case after Monday’s arguments, leaving Friday to wait.
“Getting older, I understand what stress does to you now,” Friday said after the court hearing.
Friday acknowledges killing the eagle with a rifle on the Wind River Indian Reservation in central Wyoming, home to both the Northern Arapaho and Eastern Shoshone tribes.
Friday says he didn’t know about a U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service program that allows American Indians to apply for permits to kill eagles for religious purposes. Attorneys representing him and his tribe claim the federal agency did its best to keep the program secret and only grudgingly issued the permits.
Late last year, U.S. District Judge William F. Downes agreed, dismissing the criminal charge against Friday.
“Although the government professes respect and accommodation of the religious practices of Native Americans, its actions show callous indifference to such practices,” Downes wrote in his ruling. “It is clear to this court that the government has no intention of accommodating the religious beliefs of Native Americans except on its own terms and in its own good time.”
Kathryn E. Kovacs, lawyer with the U.S. Department of Justice, said Monday that Friday had no standing to argue about shortcomings of the federal permitting process because he never applied for a permit before killing the eagle.
Kovacs also told the appellate panel that Friday’s ignorance of the permitting process “does not give him a license to ignore the law.”
John T. Carlson, an assistant federal public defender representing Friday, argued the Fish and Wildlife Service kept the existence of permits quiet and instead tried to point Indians toward a federal repository in Denver that stores the remains of eagles killed by power lines or other causes.
Requiring Native Americans to secure permits to kill eagles infringes on their religious freedom, Carlson said.
“No other religion has a permit system denying it access to its sacred objects,” Carlson said.
Chris Schneider, lawyer for the Northern Arapaho Tribe, told the judges that it was not in the tribe’s interest to allow people to wipe out the bald eagle.
“The Arapaho believe, as a people, that the creator gave them the golden and bald eagle,” Schneider said.
Speaking after the hearing, Friday said he doesn’t accept the government’s argument that he shouldn’t be allowed to argue against the permitting system because he didn’t apply for a permit.
“I don’t think they should be able to do that because of what the First Amendment obviously says is my right to practice my religion,” Friday said. “Now I have to wait for three months to a year (for a permit)?”
Senior members of the Northern Arapaho Tribe appeared in court in support of Friday.
Nelson P. White, Sr., a member of the Northern Arapaho Business Council, said after the hearing that he doesn’t believe Friday should be charged with any crime. And he said tribal members don’t kill eagles indiscriminately.
“My grandfather gave me a whistle from the eagle bone, and his grandfather gave that to him,” White said. “We don’t kill birds every day, or every year.”
White said many of the birds American Indians receive from the federal depository are rotten, or otherwise unfit for use in religious ceremonies.
“That’s unacceptable,” White said. “How would a non-Indian feel if they had to get their Bible from a repository.”
Steve Moore, lawyer with the Native American Rights Fund, in Boulder, Colo., said Monday that people in Indian country and in American Indian legal circles continue to watch Friday’s case with great interest.
“The Fish and Wildlife Service and the Interior Department know full well of the frustrations of Indian people who attempt to legitimately and sincerely use eagle feathers for cultural purposes,” Moore said. “But they have not taken effective steps to try to correct the problem.”
Increases in the eagle population allowed the federal government to remove the bald eagle from the list of threatened species under the Endangered Species Act this year. The bird had been reclassified from endangered to threatened in 1995.
