To the editor:

Roger Boyd’s positions on the Baker Wetlands continue to baffle me.

Mr. Boyd acknowledges the presence of Native Americans in the wetlands. Previously, he stated that the Wetlands were never “Indian land.” I rebutted that maybe he should check with the Caddo, Kaw, Osage, Shawnee, and Delaware Tribes about this assertion in a previous letter.

Mr. Boyd also acknowledges the presence of Native spirituality in the wetlands. Acknowledging this issue now seems a safe thing to do. I mean, he wouldn’t want to contradict the incomplete Brockington Report in the EIS or offend the Baker administration or board of trustees. Four years ago, Paul Brockington completely overlooked the indigenous religious and medicinal value of the wetlands. This omission is part of the practice of overlooking indigenous culture by western science. Western science has pretty much thrived on the manipulation of nature to man’s needs, via hypothesis and explanation.

Mr. Boyd told a reporter for the Baker Orange (Feb. 18, 2005), “Most of my friends in the environmental community are against it (the trafficway). I get an awful lot of personal attacks because I am accepting it.” It must be hard to do the right thing when non-scientists are pushing the agenda. The bad part is watching Mr. Boyd also become a manipulator of nature.

Native people were able to live on this continent with little evidence of altering it for thousands of years. Look at what Mr. Boyd is proposing now, and what non-Natives have done to this continent in the last 513 years.

Mike Ford,

Bonner Springs