photo by: Chris Conde/Journal-World

Iⁿ’zhúje’waxóbe, a sacred prayer rock of the Kanza people, is pictured on July 23, 2023, at Robinson Park.

Iⁿ’zhúje’waxóbe will soon see ceremony again.

The towering red boulder, which was taken from the Kaw people nearly a century ago and made into a monument to white settlers, will soon be returned to the tribe that holds it sacred.

James Pepper Henry, vice chairman of the Kaw Nation, said even during the many years the stone stood in a City of Lawrence park, it did not lose its significance to the tribe.

“In our minds it’s always been our stone,” Pepper Henry said. “And it was stolen from us, it was taken from us.”

Before it was taken, the 28-ton red quartzite boulder rested for millennia along the Shunganunga Creek near Tecumseh, where the creek joins with the Kansas River. Geologists have said that the boulder was carried to Kansas from the area of the Dakotas on a glacier hundreds of thousands of years ago. The Kaw or Kanza people also once made their home in the northeast Kansas area, and the stone served as a spiritual gathering place where the tribe prayed to the creator. But the song and ceremony related to the stone fell silent 150 years ago, when the Kaw were forced to leave Kansas, the state that took their name but sought to erase their presence.

“From 1815 to 1900 our (Kansas) reservation shrank from 22 million acres to just a 5-acre cemetery,” Pepper Henry said.

Like the Kaw themselves, Iⁿ’zhúje’waxóbe, which is pronounced “EE(n) ZHOO-jay wah-HO-bay,” would also be removed from where it long resided. In 1929, a group of City of Lawrence officials and community members arranged to take the boulder from its resting place to make it into a monument to the town’s settlers. Since then it has sat in a small park, hemmed in by a busy downtown Lawrence intersection, displaying a plaque that makes no mention of the tribe.

Pauline Eads Sharp, chairperson of the Kanza Heritage Society, said reclaiming the stone and the history it represents is important for the Kaw people.

“We lost so much of our history and culture after removal, so just to reclaim any piece of our culture and story is important,” Sharp said.

On Aug. 30, almost 150 years to the day since the tribe’s forced removal to present-day Oklahoma and nearly 100 years since the city fitted the stone with the plaque and propped it up with mortar in Robinson Park, Iⁿ’zhúje’waxóbe will be returned to the Kaw Nation. Its return, to land in Kansas now owned by the tribe, represents not only the restoration of one of the tribe’s most important cultural items, but a re-anchoring of the Kaw’s presence in their former homelands.

photo by: Contributed Photo

Pauline Eads Sharp, chairperson of the Kanza Heritage Society, and James Pepper Henry, vice chairman of the Kaw Nation, stand in front of Iⁿ‘zhúje‘waxóbe.

A sacred red rock

Though tribal prayer charts recorded the stone’s significance to the Kaw people, the removal and cultural assimilation forced upon the Kaw ruptured some cultural knowledge and traditions related to Iⁿ’zhúje’waxóbe. Still, from stories and relatives, some tribal members would hear mention of a sacred prayer rock that was taken from the tribe and put on display in Lawrence.

Sharp is the granddaughter of Lucy Tayiah Eads, who was chief of the tribe at the time the stone was taken from the creek. However, growing up, Sharp didn’t learn about Iⁿ’zhúje’waxóbe, which literally means “sacred red rock.” She said she read about it as an adult in a story by Ron Parks about sacred places in Kansas, and through research later found it on the Kanza prayer chart.

“There were songs sung at the site,” Sharp said. “They would ask for the attributes of the big red rock, (to) give us those attributes to survive.”

In addition to the impact of removal, Pepper Henry spoke to the Kaw history and culture that was lost because of government boarding schools — his grandfather would have his mouth washed out with soap anytime he spoke the Kaw language at school. Pepper Henry said his great uncle Luther Pepper, a former vice chairman of the tribe, was the one who first told him about the stone. Pepper Henry said though details about the tribe’s cultural practices regarding the stone were lost, they know that the stone served as a gathering place for the Kaw to pay their respects to the creator, Wakanda.

“We didn’t pray to the rock, but the rock was there as a kind of a conduit or as a reminder of the strength and power of Wakanda,” he said. “So that rock was a symbol, just like a church or altar would be to Europeans.”

He says getting Iⁿ’zhúje’waxóbe back feels like being reunited with a grandparent. Still, he says there is also sadness due to what has been forgotten.

“We don’t know the songs anymore that we would sing to the creator at Iⁿ’zhúje’waxóbe,” Pepper Henry said. “We don’t know the cultural practices that we had with Iⁿ’zhúje’waxóbe. So that makes me sad a little bit, because we don’t have those things anymore.”

At the same time, he said the Kaw have control of their destiny moving forward and the stone’s return gives the tribe an opportunity to create new traditions.

photo by: Contributed Photo

A chalk drawing of Iⁿ‘zhúje‘waxóbe is pictured on the sidewalk across from the prayer rock.

A long conversation

Kaw tribal members have raised the topic of the stone throughout the years, including in 1998 and again in 2004. Sharp and Lawrence artist Dave Loewenstein began discussing a project to acknowledge the stone’s history and tribal significance in 2015, and a community project to re-engage discussion began in January 2020, as the Journal-World has reported.

Ultimately, in November 2020, the Kaw Nation formally requested that Lawrence return the stone. In March 2021, the Lawrence City Commission voted unanimously to adopt a joint resolution with Douglas County to offer a formal apology to the people of the Kaw Nation for appropriating and defacing the prayer rock and agreeing to its return “without conditions.” However, at the time, there was not a funding source or a specific timeline identified for the stone’s return.

That changed in 2022 when the project was awarded a $5 million grant from The Mellon Foundation to cover the stone’s return, a publication about the stone’s history and cultural significance, and infrastructure for the stone’s new location. Loewenstein said the grant came at a time, following the murder of George Floyd in 2020 and the racial and historical reckoning that followed, that the country’s monuments were being reconsidered. He said he thinks the city’s resolution to return the stone and its upcoming return to the tribe carry far-reaching significance.

“The resolution also engages with the history of colonization and there’s a strong apology, not just to Kaw people but other Indigenous people,” Loewenstein said. “It’s pretty remarkable. I think someday it will be very significant to look back on, that this happened in our city. Right now, it’s just a piece of paper, but we’re not even aware today how unique this might be.”

The grant to return Iⁿ’zhúje’waxóbe is part of the Mellon Foundation’s Monuments Project, which launched in 2020 and committed $250 million to support public projects that “express, elevate, and preserve the stories of those who have often been denied historical recognition, and explores how we might foster a more complete telling of who we are as a nation.” The project to return the stone is led by members of the Kaw Nation in collaboration with the City of Lawrence, University of Kansas, Spencer Museum of Art, Kanza Heritage Society and others. Pepper Henry, Sharp and Loewenstein are all members of the project team.

The grant also includes funding for the project team to discuss how Robinson Park can be used to tell the full story of the rock. Loewenstein said the grant will cover ongoing public workshops on the topic and that eventually proposals will be presented to the Lawrence City Commission.

Sydney Pursel, a curator with the Spencer, has helped lead workshops at the park as a member of the project’s community engagement team. Pursel, who is a member of the Iowa tribe, said she is hopeful that the project will result in the Kaw Nation having more of a presence in Kansas. She said she also hopes it will spur recognition among the general public about all the tribes forcibly removed from the state.

“Everyone, when they talk about the four tribes in Kansas, they talk about the four that have reservation lands,” Pursel said. “But often they forget about the Kaw Nation, the Wyandotte, the Osage, that were also in this area before the current reservation lands were established. So I’d really like to see more of a Kaw presence in this state, in this town, so that they are not forgotten.”

Loewenstein said that he sees the conversation about the future of Robinson Park as another starting point for the community, the beginning of the community reconsidering the so-called pioneer history of the area.

“It’s heartening to me to see that that now can happen to some degree,” he said. “It is the smallest of beginnings in the larger scheme of things, but it’s been remarkable.”

Pepper Henry said he hopes that when the stone is returned, the Kaw, as well as other Indigenous peoples with a history in the state, will have a place in the park. He said the tribe has made arrangements to loan the plaque honoring the city’s founders, which was recently removed from the stone, to the Watkins Museum of History.

The $5 million grant from the Mellon Foundation will cover the stone’s upcoming relocation to Allegawaho Memorial Heritage Park near Council Grove. The park is located on land owned by the Kaw Nation that includes a portion of the tribe’s final reservation in Kansas. The grant will cover infrastructure and other improvements at the park, helping the tribe to strengthen its ties to the state it once called home.

photo by: Contributed Photo

Lawrence artist Dave Loewenstein puts his hand on Iⁿ‘zhúje‘waxóbe, the prayer rock sacred to the Kaw Nation, after the removal of a plaque that was affixed to the rock as a monument to white settlers.

photo by: Saralyn Reece Hardy/Contributed Photo

Dave Loewenstein and Sydney Pursel sit by Iⁿ‘zhúje‘waxóbe, the prayer rock sacred to the Kaw Nation.

A greater presence in Kansas

At Allegawaho Park, Iⁿ’zhúje’waxóbe will be the center of new ceremonies, once again becoming part of the tribe’s cultural traditions.

Pepper Henry said the return of the stone to Kaw land represents the “rematriation” of one of the tribe’s most important cultural items and an exercise in the tribe’s sovereignty. It’s an action that — after forced removal from their tribal lands and attempts to erase their language and culture through boarding schools — helps the tribe reclaim its identity.

“It’s kind of putting things back into balance again,” he said. “If we don’t claim our heritage and nurture our language and perpetuate our cultural lifeways, then nobody else will. And we lose our unique identity of who we are as a people. And so, to me, reclaiming these sacred items and things that are important to our history and to our culture, this represents us, who we are.”

The tribe’s decision to move the stone to Allegawaho Park in Kansas, rather than to Oklahoma where the tribe is currently headquartered, also ties into the tribe’s identity. The tribe purchased the land in 2002, which Sharp said includes the site of the tribe’s last reservation in the state, remains of old Kaw dwellings, and other important cultural elements, including a monument marking the remains of an unknown Kaw warrior. The Kaw hold powwows and other events on the land.

“That’s our land; it’s the site of our former reservation,” Sharp said. “It’s where we gather every year. We are there, and if the rock is there, it’s reconnecting, it’s rematriating the rock to the people and the land.”

Pepper Henry said a large part of the grant funding will go toward infrastructure for the park, including adding electricity and running water. He said other planned additions include an open-air welcome center, showers and a campground, all of which will be important in the tribe’s effort to strengthen its ties to the state.

“This is kind of the beginning,” he said. “We want to increase our presence in Kansas and Allegawaho Park is probably one of the first steps, and then eventually we’d love to have a greater presence in Kansas. It’s my dream that someday our tribe will return to Kansas in some meaningful way.”

Sharp said the infrastructure to place the stone in Allegawaho Park is still being constructed, and the stone will be taken to a temporary location near Council Grove until it is ready. She said the plan is to have the stone installed in the park next summer for Washunga Days, which is the third weekend in June, when the tribe holds its annual powwow.

Editor’s note: This story has been revised to correct the date for Washunga Days.