Chief's descendant calls for bluffland preservation

Chief's descendant calls for bluffland preservation
10/6/2008 11:00:48 AM
By John Weiss

Post-Bulletin, Rochester MN

ELBA -- The descendant of the Sioux chief whose people had their summer camp at Winona has called on those living there now to preserve the blufflands overlooking the city.

Leonard Wabasha, culture resources director for the Shakopee Mdewakanton Sioux Community, said he was asked by a group that is pushing for preserving blufftops from overdevelopment to put his thoughts in a letter. After his talk to students Friday at Whitewater State Park, he also talked about his people and his concern about preserving the bluffs.

His worry isn't so much for aesthetics but more about preservation of his people's burial mounds. Many of the mounds are on the crest of bluffs, the area groups are pushing to keep from being developed for houses.

Some part of his letter are:

• "From time immemorial, when the river valley was pure and pristine oak savanna, my people have lived here and along this great river we once called Wakpa Tanka. Everything we needed to survive and live life was and is still here."

• "But this land represents more than survival, it also represents an afterlife." They would gather bones of the dead and put them in mounds. "These mounds were placed overlooking the landscape, as is the case here along this river, on top of these bluffs. There are many mounds and many of them are undetectable. And so you see, these bluffs carry more than great beauty, they carry and protect the remains of our deceased."

Wabasha's fear is that the fighting over development is negative. Not only does that development not respect the dead of his people, but it also hurts the beauty of the land, he says.

He isn't trying to push himself into the bluff debate and hasn't given any proposals for preserving them. But he would like to see something put into writing. "I would like to see something more concrete than what is there," he said. There should be limits on the desecration of the pristine landscape.

Such a move would not only be good for those living there today but for those who lived there in the past, Wabasha said. "It's for the good of the whole," he said.

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