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AND UNDER IT ALL IS THE LAND December 5, 2007 Susan Bates

Recently I read an article in the Wausau Daily Herald about an apartment complex in Weston, Wisconsin that was being built, possibly on Sacred Land. Citizens were concerned because some of the locals remember seeing sunken graves and crosses where the construction is taking place. The developer of the project assured everyone that he had done his homework and was confident that no graves were underneath the apartments. There still are some graves 200 feet away, but he wasn't sure anyone was buried in them. The same day I received an email from a reader who was passing on a concern from a man whose Cherokee Ancestors rest in Lincolnton, North Carolina. The land in question is a 4 acre tract, where 6 raised areas about 6 ft. long by 3 ft. wide are located. The land has been sold and a home is to be built there. The anguish in this man's words were touching. He is fighting to save this "final" resting place of his grandfathers. I am reminded of how it was, and maybe still is, in parts of Europe. There was often nothing final about a grave. With so many people dying over the centuries, cemeteries and crypts were full to overflowing. Bones were often dug up and moved to "warehouses" - often church basements, when the "rent" on the grave went unpaid. This continent was not the sparsely populated land your history books would lead you to believe, but our People walked lightly on the Earth. And while there were many large cities and burial mounds here, the majority of People were buried simply. We built no great monuments to call attention to our dead. Our dust mingles with the soil. My cabin sits in an old riverbed. The once wide river is now only a shallow creek. I'm surrounded by hills where giant rocks live and it is easy to commune with the Spirits that protect this land. I wonder how many generations of People have lived here in my valley and walked where I walk. Do their bones lie beneath my feet as I trod these ancient paths? Once I found an arrowhead. It was in the field in front of my cabin. My friend, who was a gifted Osage flint knapper, told me that the arrowhead was 2500 years old. When I held it in my hand, I could sense the one who had made it and shot it at a deer or maybe an enemy. He had stood on the hill behind my cabin. Twenty five hundred years ago, he was. And he still is....... Yes, it is sad to see so much of the past being trampled into the Earth. But that is the way it is...... All things pass away, yet all remains in one form or another. Perhaps in another 2500 years someone will find evidence that I lived here in this beautiful valley. Maybe they will wonder who I was, how I lived and how I died. My final resting place may never be known. But it won't matter. I'll still be here - just like those who have gone before.

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