And our name shall be forgotten in time, and no man shall have our works in remembrance, and our life shall pass away as the trace of a cloud, and shall be dispersed as a mist, that is driven away with the beams of the sun, and overcome with the heat thereof. Wisdom of Solomon 2:4, New American Bible
Yesterday afternoon I attended another of the monthly "Conversations at BSC." The topic - Sacred Places on the Great Plains - reminded me of the Bible verse above. Things will be forgotten!
The discussion mostly centered on Native American sites in the region which they consider as sacred. So many of them were excluded outside the boundaries of the reservations, and they became forgotten or unusable by the Indians. One example pointed to the Medicine Rock site near Leith, ND, which is protected as a historical site by the North Dakota State Historical Society. A picture showed the rock with a small protective fence surrounding it; it's not big. In the Q & A session, an Indian gentleman in the audience stood up and told this story of how small the protected area was and how all the surrounding land belonged to a farmer who would not give permission for ceremonies to extend beyond the fence. For all practical purposes the site cannot be used by them for their traditional worship.
The picture above is Bear Butte in South Dakota, and the development in front resulted from the success of the Sturgis Motorcycle Rally. The butte is considered very sacred, but they cannot keep sightseers and hikers from encroaching on their ceremonial ground. They have asked visitors to refrain from visiting the butte in the month of June without much luck. Of course, all of the Black Hills was given to the Indians in an early treaty, but the discovery of gold changed that.
Other modern developments take away sacred sites. The flooding of the Lakes Sacajawea and Oahe covered much, and this is not to forget the property of other cultures as well.
The two gentleman moderators, President Skogen of BSC and scholar Jenkinson, prefaced the afternoon with a brief rundown of a recent trip to Europe and their break-away jaunt from their group to track down some historical topics, one of which was to see the site of Mussolini's death in Italy. I think the whole afternoon was well setup when they said they asked around for information for the World War II era dictator, but couldn't get much satisfaction as they asked mostly younger 30ish people. This group wasn't any better informed about historical matters than 30 somethings anywhere else.
Maybe the George Santayana quotation I memorized years ago teaches a horrible truth: "Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it."
Yesterday afternoon I attended another of the monthly "Conversations at BSC." The topic - Sacred Places on the Great Plains - reminded me of the Bible verse above. Things will be forgotten!
The discussion mostly centered on Native American sites in the region which they consider as sacred. So many of them were excluded outside the boundaries of the reservations, and they became forgotten or unusable by the Indians. One example pointed to the Medicine Rock site near Leith, ND, which is protected as a historical site by the North Dakota State Historical Society. A picture showed the rock with a small protective fence surrounding it; it's not big. In the Q & A session, an Indian gentleman in the audience stood up and told this story of how small the protected area was and how all the surrounding land belonged to a farmer who would not give permission for ceremonies to extend beyond the fence. For all practical purposes the site cannot be used by them for their traditional worship.
The picture above is Bear Butte in South Dakota, and the development in front resulted from the success of the Sturgis Motorcycle Rally. The butte is considered very sacred, but they cannot keep sightseers and hikers from encroaching on their ceremonial ground. They have asked visitors to refrain from visiting the butte in the month of June without much luck. Of course, all of the Black Hills was given to the Indians in an early treaty, but the discovery of gold changed that.
Other modern developments take away sacred sites. The flooding of the Lakes Sacajawea and Oahe covered much, and this is not to forget the property of other cultures as well.
The two gentleman moderators, President Skogen of BSC and scholar Jenkinson, prefaced the afternoon with a brief rundown of a recent trip to Europe and their break-away jaunt from their group to track down some historical topics, one of which was to see the site of Mussolini's death in Italy. I think the whole afternoon was well setup when they said they asked around for information for the World War II era dictator, but couldn't get much satisfaction as they asked mostly younger 30ish people. This group wasn't any better informed about historical matters than 30 somethings anywhere else.
Maybe the George Santayana quotation I memorized years ago teaches a horrible truth: "Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it."
