Monthly Archives: August 2016

Who decides that there is “no adverse effect” of a sewage treatment plant on a sacred and culturally important place?

Reclaiming Mini Sota Makoce

Deadline for comment on the desecration of the Afton Effigy Mound is Thursday, September 1, 2016, at 4:30 PM (not midnight). Here’s the pdf that includes information on how to submit comments.

In the end it is the Dakota people themselves–and other Native people who care about the place–who make such decisions. And this decision cannot be made on archaeological grounds alone. As seen in the case of the Afton Effigy Mound, it is not the Minnesota State Historic Preservation Office which makes such decisions.

The MNSHPO made its recommendation that it might be true that there was “no adverse effect,” but in the end it was the Minnesota PCA–the agency pushing the sewage treatment project within and adjacent to the ancient mount–which made this “determination.” But this was an archeological determination. It was about the effect of the project on the mound as an archaeological site. It did not take into account the effect of the mound as a sacred and cultural place.

What is the effect of building a sewage treatment project adjacent to and within a sacred and culturally important place? Not the effect of the project on an archaeological site, but the effect on that intangible sacredness and cultural importance contained in the mound and the area around it.

This is not a question either the MNSHPO or the MPCA is interested in answering. But it is a question Dakota people have to answer for themselves. And the answer they give–like the the answers they have given in relation to many such development projects in the past–will have implications for generations to come.

A Mound in Your Back Yard–A Question of Stewardship

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Deadline for comment on the desecration of the Afton Effigy Mound is Thursday, September 1, 2016, at 4:30 PM (not midnight). Here’s the pdf that includes information on how to submit comments: www.pca.state.mn.us

Throughout the history of Minnesota as a European-American place there are many examples to demonstrate how Native sacred and culturally important sites should be acknowledged, preserved, and respected, and, conversely many examples of how such sites have been ignored, desecrated, and despised. These examples do not all fit the common stereotypes of who has protected sacred sites and who has not. While Native people have often fought for the protection of such sites, there are examples of individual Native people and tribes letting desecration happen, even collaborating in it, and there are other examples of Non-Native people seeking to carry out an enlightened and unexpected stewardship, something that could be a good example for other White people.

MoundsPkPanoramThe mounds in St. Paul’s Indian Mounds Park have come to receive an increasing amount of protection and acknowledgement for their sacredness, after a period of initial desecration and neglect. It is not known if a similar degree of acknowledgement and protection will ever occur for the Afton Effigy Mound.

One unexpectedly enlightened White person lived in the town of Afton and did his best to show stewardship over the Afton Effigy Mound–the same mound that Afton seeks to desecrate–part of which lay in his own back yard. His name was D. J. Peabody. A 1956 Stillwater newspaper reported his story:

INDIAN GRAVE. D. J. Peabody of Afton steadfastly refuses to budge a 10-foot high Indian mound in his backyard. “I could use all that fill for the rest of my backyard, but I wouldn’t want anyone digging up my grave,” the 60-year-old retired mechanic says. He now runs a hobby shop next to his home.

Both Peabody, who has lived in Afton since 1924, and his father-in-law Frank Squires, another long time resident firmly believe the mound was the head of a 150-foot-long fish-shaped Indian burial ground. Time, erosion, floods, and cloudbursts have wiped out its contours excepting the head.

At least one tomahawk and a number of arrowheads have been found in the mound, Peabody says. A number of years ago several workmen uncovered two skulls from the body of the fish.

Peabody is grading the mound slightly so that he can plant grass and keep it mowed.

“Sometimes I just like to stare at the mound and wonder how many Indians are buried there and how they died and and what kind of people they were.”

Given the way in which the Afton Effigy Mound began to be desecrated after Peabody died, and given what may happen with the sewage treatment facility advanced by the Minnesota Pollution Control Agency today, D.J. Peabody was clearly a rare and exceptional resident of Afton.

But Peabody was not the only White resident of Minnesota who sought to carry out an enlightened stewardship over Native sacred and culturally important sites. An early history of the town of Winona, Minnesota (History of Winona and Olmsted Counties, 276-277) tells the story of a “settler” named John Burns who came to live on a plot of land in a valley adjacent to the later town of Winona, having received permission to settle there from Wabasha’s band of Dakota, prior to their enforced removal to a reservation on the Upper Minnesota River in the 1850s, and their later exile from the state of Minnesota in 1862.

“The locality was the special home of Wabasha and his family relatives when living in this vicinity. It was sometimes called Wabasha’s garden by the old settlers.” The account states that this land contained a burial ground. The Dakota asked Burns to respect the burials which he did faithfully:

Quite a number of Indian graves were on these grounds. Nearly in front of the farmhouse there were two or three graves of more modern burial lying side by side. These were said to be the last resting-place of some of Wabasha’s relatives. The Sioux made a special request of Mr. Burns and his family that these graves should not be disturbed. This Mr. Burns promised, and the little mounds, covered with billets of wood, were never molested, although they were in his garden and not far from his house. For many years they remained as they were left by the Indians, until the wood by which they were covered rotted away entirely. A light frame or fence of poles put there by Mr. Burns always covered the locality during his lifetime.1

One must also acknowledge the many more accounts of mounds leveled, destroyed and generally obliterated. It is no wonder that the Town of Afton now seeks to desecrate the Afton Effigy Mound. Rather than paying D.J. Peabody his due, following his example of good stewardship and that of John Burns in Winona, the now seeks to erect a highly visible evidence of the sorry legacy of White Minnesota as a place where sacred sites are not given the protection they ought to receive, where paradise is torn down to put up a parking lot. It is a shameful history. And now it will be Afton’s shame too.

 

Comments Required by September 1, 2016, on the Afton Effigy Mound…by Consulting Parties not the Public…but even so the Public should weigh in

Reclaiming Mini Sota Makoce
Do Dakota and other Native groups in and around Minnesota agree that the sewage treatment project to be built in and around Afton, Washington County Minnesota, will have “no adverse effects” on the Effigy or Rattlesnake Mound located in the heart of Afton? Now is the last opportunity for them to speak up for the mound, at least if they were officially consulted by the Minnesota Pollution Control Agency during planning for “Afton’s proposed infrastructure improvement projects”–sewage treatment facility. Comments by consulting parties must be received by the MPCA by the deadline of September 1, 2016. Go to https://www.pca.state.mn.us/water/f… for more information.
Winchell, Afton Mounds larger

The major reason for comment is the recent Final Determination of the Minnesota Pollution Control Agency that the project will result in “no adverse effects to historic properties” (the Afton Effigy Mound). Consulting parties, that is those tribes and other entities who were allowed to consult over the last few months, will have until that deadline of September 1, 2016, to comment on this finding. These consulting parties include the following Sioux or Dakota communities or reservations: Shakopee, Upper Sioux, Lower Sioux, Prairie Island, and the Sisseton Wahpeton Oyate. Other Native groups include the Mille Lacs Band of Ojibwe, the Leech Lake Band of Ojibwe, the White Earth Nation, and the Minnesota Indian Affairs Council.

During the recent field work for evaluation of the effigy mound, known as the Rattlesnake Mound (21WA10), the site was determined to be eligible for the National Register of Historic Places under Criterion A, C, and D, though those doing the evaluation stated their opinion that the site would not be affected by the project. In response, Sarah Beimers of the Minnesota State Historic Preservation Office wrote to the MPCA stating that while the SHPO did not agree that the project would have “no effect” on the site it did agree that the a finding of “no adverse effect” might be warranted. Beimers did condition that statement on some aspects of the project design, and further insisted that “all consulting parties currently participating in the Section 106 review of this project will be provided adequate opportunity to review and provide meaningful comment.”

This is that opportunity, though it is not known if it is adequate. It is believed that the consulting parties were notified on or about August 1, and were given until September 1 to submit their comments. Copies of such a lettter have not been made public. Now is the time to go on the record. The MPCA has provided a pdf which contains information on how to submit comments. It is located at: https://www.pca.state.mn.us/sites/d…

While members of the public are not given the opportunity to comment, it is certainly within the power of the public to contact these consulting parties and urge them to submit a comment by the deadline.