UNIVERSITY DAILY KANSAN
Monday, April 21, 1997
5A
RELIGIOUS JUSTICE:
Continued from Page 1A
Lawrence Trafficway would cut through this small piece of Bureau of Indian Affairs land, where Haskell Indian Nations University students pray in sweat lodges. The road would run near the Medicine Wheel, which symbolizes, among other things, the four directions and the four gifts of humans: wisdom, intelligence, compassion and openness (or innocence).
For about four years, the South Lawrence Trafficway has been an issue for Lawrence Native Americans and Haskell students and faculty, who use the Medicine Wheel and the wetlands south of the campus for spiritual purposes.
Despite protests from opponents who want the road moved south of the Wakarusa River, out of the wetlands entirely, the County Commission has moved to push through a 31st Street alignment of the trafficway.
Non-Natives might think there has been progress in U.S. government and Native American relations during the last 30 years. From a Native American point of view, not much has changed.
"We're used to being given promises and having them broken, but in Lawrence, Kansas, in 1997?" asks Dan Wildcat, professor of sociology at Haskell and Yuchi Nation member.
Once again, local Native Americans recount history, hoping, though not expecting, that both the community and local government will learn, understand and change their point of view.
Wildcat breaks down the trafficway issue into three themes: the struggle to have indigenous, religious traditions respected and honored; the struggle to have native people empowered in local issues that directly affect them; and the message that, when it comes to questions of development and growth, Native Americans are dealt with differently than other U.S. citizens.
"It is just a painful example of how little has changed." says Wildcat.
For Pemina Yellow Bird, a political activist and a member of the Arikara and Hidatsa Nations, the trafficway is a reminder that what is written on paper for Native Americans, is not always carried out.
It wasn't until 1978 that Native Americans were finally able to fully exercise their religious rights, at least in theory, with the passage of The American Indian Religious Freedom Act.
Originally, Haskell had 1500 acres of wetlands given to it by the federal government. That has now been reduced to 315 acres. The rest was given to the University of Kansas, Baker University, the county, the state, and private individuals because they were declared excess lands. The BIA, which oversees Native American lands, was compensated for the loss, but Haskell was not.
"Now, here we are today, 500-some years later, having to beg them not to build a superhighway across a fraction of what remains of an original campus, set aside by Congress for the sole and exclusive purpose of educating native children," Yellow Bird says.
Wildcat says that the trafficway process
shows that Native Americans are not truly included and that Douglas County does not want them involved.
"They tell native people to learn to operate within the system, to learn the law, become educated so that we can advocate for our rights and our own issues." Wildcat says.
But, the trafficway, he says, has been a process that has left out the native people every step of the way.
It saddens Wildcat that in a town as supposedly progressive as Lawrence, in a country that has supposedly stopped being prejudiced against Native Americans, such events could take place.
Opponents of the trafficway had been told by the Douglas County Commission that the Kansas Department of Transportation had commissioned an independent company to complete the SEIS. The report was never finished.
The most recent development in the trafficway process is the debate whether a Supplemental Environmental Impact Statement, which would investigate both the environmental impacts on the wetlands and the cultural impacts on the Haskell campus nearby, is needed. By federal law, if federal funds are used the SEIS must be completed.
The commission says that it does not need to compel the SEIS because it voted to use the $11.6 million, which was federal money remaining from the initial trafficway project, for the eastern leg, but without federal involvement. This "defederalization" of federal funds is illegal, opponents say.
Trafficway opponents have filed a lawsuit to have the SEIS completed. Now, the county must wait to begin work until after the trial on May 2 in the U.S. District Court for Kansas in Kansas City, Kan. If the judge rules that an SEIS is necessary, the county will have to wait until the report is completed.
KU students and Lawrence residents who would like to see a trafficway and a quicker way around town might ask, "What's the big deal about a road, anyway?"
Why all the fuss?
To those involved in the protests, the road is a matter of religious and civil rights, and survival for their people.
Native Americans in Douglas County have few places where they can properly pray, says Yellow Bird, plaintiff in the SEIS lawsuit. For her, and the students who come from across the country to Haskell, the Medicine Wheel and the sweat lodges in the wetlands are extremely important.
Native Americans are trying to maintain their spiritual rights by opposing the eastern leg of the South Lawrence Trafficway.
a trafficway along 31st Street would increase the traffic noise immensely, infringing on their religious rights, Yellow Bird says.
Anna Wilson, KU senior, Haskell alumna and member of the Ho-chunk Nation, says that for her and the students at Haskell, the Medicine Wheel represents both a spiritual and historical site.
"We require quiet. We require purity, a non-contamination of the area in which we pray," Yellow Bird says. "In some instances we require darkness. We certainly need an element of peace and solitude, like everybody else when they pray."
The noise created by 31st Street, noise that would be increased by the trafficway, is already disruptive to their ceremonies, Wilson says, and is comparable to someone talking aloud during a traditional church service.
The above photo illustrates how close 31st Street is to the Medicine Wheel. The proposed eastern leg of the South Lawrence Trafficway would run along 31st Street, south of Haskell Indian Nations University
"Can you imagine someone striking up a normal conversation when a congregation is taking communion?" she asks.
A Wall of Emotion
"It will increase Haskell's clear sense of isolation from this community and will serve as a standing daily reminder of how little that community is respected within the larger community of Lawrence," she says.
The county has offered to build some kind of wall next to the trafficway to block noise, but Yellow Bird says that solution would probably do little and could have adverse effects.
Mark Buhler, county commissioner, who has been on the commission for six years and has watched the trafficway turn into the heated debate that it is, says that a wall blocking the noise of the trafficway would be an improvement to the current situation.
Buhler says that the 31st Street route is the only option.
"It is the best of three bad alternatives," he adds.
Not all Native Americans in Lawrence agree with every aspect of the battle to stop the trafficway.
Benny Smith, Cherokee elder and director of counseling services at Haskell, says that, although many people need silence to pray, it is not absolutely necessary.
Smith says that in Native American prayers, it is necessary to block one's self off from the rest of the world, to become disconnected.
"You can disconnect yourself within a crowd," he says, "and be an individual."
However, for those students who require prayers at the Medicine Wheel and the sweat lodges, it is important to them to have silence, he said.
Smith often uses Native American spiritual ideas to counsel students in times of need and says that there would be more resistance to the trafficway from the students if more of them had retained their native religions and traditions. But many have been raised as Christians, in a white world.
"Around 20 percent of our students here have a real tribal, cultural, custom background," he says.
Yellow Bird, who has a traditional background, says it is hard watching what were once native people's homelands change around her.
"I constantly think about the disparity, and the treatment of my people," she says. "It's a very bittersweet existence. Every day we get up and we remember what it was like. Even though we weren't there, we are told through our oral histories."
Opponents of the trafficway have told this story to the County Commission time and time again. However, the commission still
A Contradictory View
intends to build the road. Why is it that in a town as sensitive and liberal as Lawrence believes itself to be, Native Americans would have such a hard time having their voices heard?
"We have a schizophrenic, kind of contradictory view," says Donald Stull, KU professor of anthropology.
Stull says that non-natives have a romantic view of Native Americans, and like to think of them in the past, a view reinforced by movies such as Dances With Wolves. In modern times, we often don't want to acknowledge Native Americans as minorties, he says.
"When they stand up and assert their rights, then non-Indians don't like that very much." Stull says. "We have a sense that Indian people need to be like the rest of us."
Anna Wilson says that although Native Americans had to learn the white ways, few whites learned about Native Americans.
"We had to learn the Western ways of life, but they never learned ours," she says. "It's an issue of ignorance. Not willing to be
open-minded, not willing to learn."
David Melmer, writer for Indian Country Today, a national, Native-owned weekly, says the trafficway is an issue that may gain recognition by tribes but that they may not be able to help much in the fight to prevent it.
"Usually they're fighting battles on so many fronts, they may not have time to get behind this," Melmer says.
"It's really about who's got the resources, who's got the power." Melm says.
Stull says that he does not know how the trafficway will be resolved, but that the future may be bleak.
"Native Americans are becoming a smaller and smaller percentage of the population, and their economic resources are limited at best," he says. "I'm not all that positive about the future of Indian affairs."
FULL TIME SUMMER WORK
Advertising Sales
$300 to $400 a Week - Commissions
The Publisher of the University of Kansas
Faculty / Staff / Student Telephone Directory
Needs Sales People. Sales Experience A Plus. Will Train
Must Have Dependable Automobile
GV Publications
1-800-288-3044 Ask For Chris Benda
The Department of English Congratulates the Winners of the 1996-97 English 101/102 & 200-level Writing Contest
Robert Easterling
Katherine Risseeuw
Michael Stipetich
Jani Kumpula
April LaMourie
Tom Jones
Alicia Kellogg Jessica Langdon Kristin Graves Lindsay Waters Joseph Meinhandt Sigrid Hubbell
Hanover Place 4th & Massachusetts 841-1212
- Completely furnished
- On-site management
- Studios, 1 & 2 bedroom apartments
- Luxury 2 BR townhomes with washer/dryer hookups & garages
- Water paid (except townhomes)
- Short walk to KU & shopping
- Laundry facilities
Ask about our 1 & 2 bedroom townhomes!
Mastercraft Management 842-4455
MASTERCRAFT
Campus Place 12th & Louisiana841-1429
Hanover Place 14th & Mass •841-1212
Orchard Corners 15th & Kasold • 749-4226
Regents Court 19th & Mass 749-0445
bears
recycle recycle
repeating!
Sundance
7th & Florida • 841-5255
Tanglewood 10th & Arkansas • 749-2415
LIVE NEAR CAMPUS! Reserve Your Apartment Today! 842-4455
recycle
recycle
Convenient, Confidential, Economical
Kathy Guth
Nurse Practitioner Gynecology
At Watkins, students receive comprehensive confidential gynecologic care. We have a board certified gynecologist and a certified gynecologic nurse practitioner. And our prices are lower than many off-campus facilities.
Services Include: contraceptives and contraceptive counseling (walk-in basis) annual exams and Pap smears including evaluation and treatment after abnormal Pap smears
- treatment for acute gynecologic problems * treatment of STDs
for females and males
● infertility counseling
and treatment.
Appointments:
864-9507
//www.ukans.edu/home/watkins
864-9500