And now:Ish <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> writes: * From: Chris Spotted Eagle <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> Counterpoint: By whose definition is Coldwater Springs not sacred? Louis Berger and Associates, the consulting firm hired by the Minnesota Department of Transportation in the Hwy. 55 controversy, determined last month that no evidence exists to validate Native Americans' claims that Coldwater Springs -- which lies in the path of a proposed reroute -- is a sacred site to us. This firm must be gifted with the sight to determine what is sacred and what is not. Did Louis Berger and Associates know what they were looking for? What are the criteria for sacred places? What kind of evidence or lack of evidence did they expect to find? Perhaps the skeletal remains of animals or even sacrificial virgins? Do they know our sacred beliefs so well that they dispute our elders and our oral tradition? Long before the beginning of time as we know it now, the place in controversy and the area surrounding it were sacred to us. They still are sacred. Our time on Earth began when our spirits alighted from the seven stars of the constellation Orion, and we became the Seven Council Fires that make up the Dakota, Lakota and Nakota nation. It was there at the conjunction of the Mississippi and Minnesota rivers that our time as Dakota people began and nearly ended. It is from that center that we spread out to be where we are now. Coldwater Springs and the military reserve bases that occupy the nearby area are the dwelling place of Wakan Tanka, the Great Mystery. The god of water dwells in the sacred spring and travels throughout the great rivers. On the bluffs on both sides of the river, we sought visions and our dead started their journeys back to the stars. On nearby Pike Island, we Dakota almost met our extinction at the hands of people who wanted our land. It was on this island between the Minnesota and Mississippi rivers that we Dakota were imprisoned in stockades, starving, becoming ill and dying. Pike Island was the beginning of our holocaust and our exile from Minnesota. So whose criteria did Louis Berger and Associates use to declare that no sacred sites exist there? Don't they see the light of the stars as our spirits arrive in the sky? Can't they hear the sound of the prayers as the vision seekers cry for a vision? Can't they hear the cries of pain, hunger and death as we died in the stockades on Pike Island? To us and by our criteria, this place is a sacred site. To desecrate it would be blasphemy and a transgression against the Creator. What power in the hands of Louis Berger and Associates. They must be demigods at least or even full-blown gods. -- The Rev. Gary Cavender, Shunghi (Red Fox), Prior Lake. Bdewakanton Wahpeton Dakota. Star Tribune - Sunday, May 9, 1999 Chris Spotted Eagle Voice & Fax 612/377-4212 [EMAIL PROTECTED] Reprinted under the fair use http://www4.law.cornell.edu/uscode/17/107.html doctrine of international copyright law. &&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&& Tsonkwadiyonrat (We are ONE Spirit) Unenh onhwa' Awayaton http://www.tdi.net/ishgooda/ &&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&
