Forest Service bows to Indians' wishes on religious site
Interpreters helping Medicine Wheel visitors appreciate landmark
By Kevin McCullen
Rocky Mountain News Staff Writer
Medicine Wheel National Historic Landmark, Wyo. - Respect may be
emerging for an ancient Indian religious site.
Heeding requests of Plains Indians religious leaders, the
Bighorn National Forest this year began an interpretive program to
help visitors to the white stones, adorned in a wheel shape,
appreciate their significance to the area's first residents.
Forest Service supervisors also agreed to discourage visitors to
the Medicine Wheel National Historic Landmark when groups of Indians
request to have private religious ceremonies.
The new policy is already undergoing some scrutiny, particularly
after some stones inside the fenced, 70-foot diameter wheel
apparently were rearranged either during or after a private
religious ceremony conducted by three Northern Cheyenne over the
4th of July weekend.
The site, near Lovell in north-central Wyoming, is protected
from disturbance by federal law. But it is unclear if the movement
of the rocks by Indians practicing a religious ceremony violates
such regulation, said Mary Randolph, spokeswoman for the Bighorn
National Forest.
"No one has ever tested this approach before in the Forest
Service, and we want to make it work. We are trying to accommodate
the spiritual needs of Indians," Randolph said. "We are trying to
instill in non-Indian visitors that the wheel is a church for
Indians."
No one is certain of the origin of the wheel, protected by a
locked gate and green fence that is adorned with small medicine or
prayer bundles left by worshipers.
Archeologists have carbon-dated rocks forming the wheel and a
cairn in the center at 7,000 years old, although Indian oral history
says it is much older. Some archeologists have theorized the
medicine wheel was built as an astronomical observatory, or to mark
the equinoxes.
John Hill, who lives at Crow Agency, Mont., calls the wheel a
"spiritual power site for us."
Hill, who fought for years to protect the wheel, remembers when
Crow, Cheyenne, Arapahoe, Blackfeet, Sioux or Shoshone would
gather in secret at night around the wheel to practice their
religion.
But the Forest Service in recent years has tried to respect the
Indian wishes. Three interpreters have been hired to protect and
explain the site, which drew 50,000 visitors in 1991, Randolph
said.
Randolph camped at the road leading to the site during the
recent vision quest, asking tourists to respect the Indians' wish
for privacy and stay out. Only two non-Indians among 500 tourists
that weekend chose to proceed.
Earlier this month, Hill and a Northern Cheyenne led a ceremony
to bless and replace a rock that had been taken from the Medicine
Wheel years ago. A visitor to the site nearly thirty years ago
recently mailed the rock back, asking that it be returned to the
wheel.
"This wheel is our open prayer shrine," Hill said. "It is a
holy place for us. It is as if you went to a holy room at the
Vatican or Temple Square in Salt Lake City. We just ask that it be
treated the same way."
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Michele Lord + If you have come here to help me,
+ you are wasting your time.....
Alpha Institute + But if you have come because
+ your liberation is bound up with mine,
milo@scicom.alphacdc.com + then let us work together.
Aboriginal Woman
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