This article is from the twice monthly newspaper, News From Indian
Country. It is published by Indian Country Communications, Inc.
with offices at Rt.2 Box 2900A, Hayward, WI 54843. They may be
contacted by calling (715) 634-5226; FAX (715) 634-3243.
NFIC, Mid-August, 1993.
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Durango, Colorado
Medicine Wheel Agreement Sets Historic Precedent For Protection
Of Sacred Sites
by Sal Salerno
News from Indian Country
A Memorandum of Agreement (MAO) which initiates
implementation of the National Historic Preservation Act, section
106, was signed by the Medicine Wheel Alliance (MWA), Medicine
Wheel Coalition for Sacred Sites of North America (MWC), Big Horn
National Forest, The Advisory Council on Historic Preservation
(ACHP) and the Wyoming State Historic Preservation Office (SHPO) in
Durango, Colorado on June 9th.
The MAO mandates a number of temporary measures designed to
avoid or minimize damage and deterioration of Medicine Wheel and
Medicine Mountain, sets aside days for traditional ceremonial use
and incorporates traditional practitioners selected by the MWA, MWC
or other concerned tribes to act in advisory capacity to state and
federal agencies of forest management.
The MAO will be followed by a Programmatic Agreement which
will provide the basis for the development and implementation of a
Historic Properties Management Plan.
The Medicine Wheel is an ancient circular structure of
unhewed pieces of limestone rock that rests on the mesa of Medicine
Mountain in Wyoming's Big Horn Mountains. Twenty eight stone
pathways or spokes radiate from a central cairn to a circular
arrangement of peripheral cairns at uneven intervals.
Built some 7,500 years ago, the Medicine Wheel's origins
remain a mystery, causing speculation as to whether it was used for
astronomy, spiritual ceremony, or as a landmark. Likened to a
'wheel,' 'hoop' or 'circle', the Wheel's actual asymmetrical shape
has led others to describe the structure as an animal effigy. The
trianguloid segments of the Wheel are said by some to resemble the
the bony plates of a turtle's shell, while others argue that the
Medicine Wheel's bilateral array of 'Spokes' symbolize the ribs of
a bison.
Though no single Native American tribe claims to have built
the Wheel, many tribes including the Northern and Southern Arapaho,
the Northern and Southern Cheyenne, Crow, Navaho, Shoshone, Sioux
tribes and Southern Ute continue to use the site for ceremonies and
traditional rites.
Larry Keown, Supervisor for the Big Horn National Forest,
concludes that while the Medicine Wheel's origins are important,
they are not the issue. You can find "as many theories about the
origins of the Medicine Wheel as you want. The symbolism of the
Medicine Wheel and the spiritual significance is what is important.
Its just like if there was a cross on the mountain, people have
reverence and respect for the cross, that it has religious meaning
and people don't question the cross. The circle is in Native
American spiritual life the same symbolism as the cross. So
therefore when you look at the Medicine Wheel and its structure it
contains the symbolism. There is no reason why you shouldn't give
it the same value and respect as you would any other sacred site.
As an agency we respect that and will manage for that."
Provisions of the MAO include:
*The access road to the Medicine Wheel will open July 1 and
close November 1.
*Visitors to the Wheel will have to park their cars at the
juncture of the access roads and the road that leads to the Federal
Aviation Agency's radar site and walk the half mile to the Medicine
Wheel. Exceptions will be made for handicapped and elderly
visitors.
*Although parking at the Medicine Wheel site is prohibited,
people who need to travel to forest lands beyond the Wheel will be
able to travel through but not stop at the Wheel site.
*Forest Managers will close the site to visitors for three
days around each equinox and solstice and twelve other days which
will also be used by Native American practitioners for traditional
ceremonies and rites.
*Traditional practitioners selected by the MWA, MWC and
other Native American tribes (who choose to do so) will act in an
advisory capacity to the Forest Service in the management of the
site.
*Provide interpreters at the site throughout the summer,
both to protect the Wheel and to explain to visitors its importance
to Native American religious life.
*Completion of ethnographic and archaeological
investigations of Medicine Mountain designed to define the
boundaries of the site.
The agreement, which represents more than five years of
negotiation between federal and state agencies and the Native
practitioners and their supporters, sets in motion a process aimed
at obtaining a long term management plan to protect the Medicine
Wheel for future generations.
Jack Trope, an attorney for the MWC, a tribal advocacy
group, sees the agreement as an important step forward in
preservation of the Medicine Wheel.
Trope estimates that its effect will be to "essentially
eliminate 98% of the vehicular traffic to the wheel by tourists. It
will also set aside about two dozen days during the year for
ceremonial use without disturbance by visitors; it will bring
Indian people into the decision making and monitoring processes in
a way that hasn't occurred before." Establishing a "monitoring team
and various requirements for consultation with traditional Indian
people just haven't been there before," Trope said.
In the past year tourism has increased from 12,000 to
70,000 visitors during the brief period between July and November
when access to the site is not cut off by snow.
Tourists, souvenir hunters and plunderers have radically
altered the Medicine Wheel and the surrounding environment since it
was "discovered" in the late nineteenth century. The cairns, for
example, are believed to have been tall enough so that a person
could sit inside them.
Vandalism continues to present a threat to the Medicine
Wheel. Mary Randolph, public affairs specialist for Bighorn
National Forest, tells the story of the couple from Philadelphia
that took a stone from Medicine Wheel but mailed it back after a
series of bad experiences.
Nicole Price, director of the MWA, a multi-racial group of
Native American practitioners and environmentalists, view the
agreement with guarded optimism.
"We're looking at no logging, no grazing, no mining, no
nothing, it really being set aside as a Native American sacred site
area. We'd all like to see the radar tower go. The problem is when
you get into that, it always gets pushed into a corner. Why is it
there? Is it still needed there? I never really sat down and talked
to the people that come into the radar station but if they're there
and have binoculars they can see everything that takes place at the
Wheel."
While Price anticipates an uphill struggle ahead she also
see the agreement as setting an important precedent. "We have made
a federal agency acknowledge that there are sacred sites. Which
they have not wanted to do.
"We are setting guidelines which they have not wanted to
do. The MAO is curtailing their activities whether they like it or
not. It is going to make other groups realize that they can do
something. That you can do something without the new amendments to
the American Indian Religious Freedom Act."
In the final analysis, Price concluded, "I'll quote Mr.
Tallbull who has said, 'Not until Federal law has heart will the
Native Americans gain.'" Mr. Tallbull is a Northern Cheyenne and a
member of the MWA. He could not be reached for comment.
Trope also sees the MAO as an important precedent. The
Medicine Wheel is a unique sacred site because it is a national
landmark and because it was something constructed by Indian people
as opposed to a natural site which is much more difficult to
protect under existing laws.
"Some of the elements of the agreement could be precedent
setting. The accommodation for ceremonial use, the management of
the site to keep vehicular traffic away, the involvement of Native
Americans in a formal and significant way in the monitoring of the
site and in decisions that involve the sit - all of those things
are precedent setting. They have happened in other places to some
extent in a different way but not in such a comprehensive way
before."
Frances Brown, Arapho spiritual leader who is director of
the MWC, sees the agreement as a workable management plan which
will begin to address the damage that has occurred to the
environment surrounding the Medicine Wheel.
The MWC has managed to convince the Forest Service to put
timer leases on hold in a 2 1/2 mile area surrounding the Medicine
Wheel while an ethnographic study gathers information that will
determine the boundaries of the site.
A number of long term issues separate the parties as they
prepare to enter the final negotiation process. For instance, while
the MWC has called for no commercial activity within a two and a
half mile radius of the Medicine Wheel, the Forest Service has not
abandoned their plan for a visitor center. Logging and snowmobile
use in the area also remain issues that will need to be worked out
in the long term agreement.
At the heart of the Medicine Wheel controversy lies the
question of whether the NHPA will limit protection to the entity or
extend protection to the entire area surrounding the site,
according to Dr. Greg Campbell.
Campbell is an anthropologist from the University of Montana
asked by elders in MWC to gather oral tradition and look into the
archeological and historical research that document pat and
contemporary uses of the Medicine Wheel. Dr. Campbell and his
associate, Dr. James Boggs, are in the preliminary stages of their
research.
Campbell, however, met with the representatives of many of
the tribes at the Medicine Wheel last summer. In his conversation
with elders and medicine people, Campbell learned that "The Wheel
operates much like an altar rather than a sacred entity in and of
itself. It's still sacred but it's sacred because it's an altar and
what is really sacred is that large entity which is the mountain."
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Michele Lord + If you have come here to help me,
+ you are wasting your time.....
+ 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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