To the editor:
In 1953, I graduated from Haskell Institute. It is a place where many different Indian nations came together, where we became a family, the Haskell family. Our hopes and dreams for unborn generations are centered there.
Despite the terrible things that were done at all the government-run boarding schools to wipe out the Indian in us, we are still here. I am at least as Creek in 2005 as when I entered Haskell. Where we overcame adversities is as important to my sense of history as how or when it happened.
Most Americans remember history as timelines. It is presented as a linear thing, a series of progressing events: causes, effects, outcomes. You "preserve" your version of the past by writing it down. Most ignore how easily that kind of record can bend the truth, or make parts that are very important to other people vanish. Much of our Haskell history is invisible to non-Indians.
Place is the "carrier" of our past. Places are at the heart of how we Indians recall, how we communicate, and how we teach our young. Events accumulate. They become part of meaning-filled landscapes. That is why our history lives in the land, reborn in the stories we pass on to our children. Places become sacred by what happened there. We return to sacred places like the wetlands to find peace, to be healed, to reconnect to our past and to renew our traditions. The trafficway should go south of the Wakarusa. It doesn't belong anywhere in the wetlands.
Martha Houle,
Shawnee Mission
Comments
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kcwarpony (anonymous) says…
Well said Martha. My Choctaw father attended Haskell in the early 1950's and passed his stories on to me. We will always be a part of that land.
craigers (anonymous) says…
How do you return to a place that you call yours and don't even take care of? Baker has been taking care of this place for years. Usually if I call something mine I take care of it. Baker performs the controlled burns, nature labs, among many other caretaking responsibilities. I don't see a lot of outside help.
kcwarpony (anonymous) says…
This has to do more with spirituality than with land ownership. We believe the earth is our Mother. We do not own Mother Earth, Mother Earth owns us. We are her children.
The house I grew up in will always be my home no matter who owns it or lives there. I will always hope that it is taken care of whether I have a say or not.
I have never been to Mississippi but I consider it to be my homeland because that is where my ancestors came out of Mother Earth, according to one of our creation stories.
The Lakota had the Black Hills taken from them but they still consider it the center of their universe.
Home is where the heart is and our hearts are with the land.