With new eyes...

Beginning graduate studies to examine GOM's role in Ho-Chunk history has been an awakening.  I see things with new eyes.  I see how much of our history has been colorized by colonialists, imperialists and historians.  I see how invisible these people think we were and still are. In fact, I was just reminded of it today in my attendance of the Rochester Park Board's Steering Committee Meeting.  There were several caucasian people there, save myself attempting to skirt the real issue of Indian Heights Park; it was once used as a burial site by the Dakota Nation.  Plans were being bantered about.  Ideas were being created and nurtured along.  Sides were being taken and a BIG line was drawn by the City's Park Director and the sports enthusiasts group who are very much ONE.  It was as if the Dakota were never in Rochester.  It was as if the token Indian on the board was not there.  Actually he wasn't, something better to do I expect.  It was as if I wasn't there.  I wasn't, because I am not officially on the committee.  Talk of trails, signs, plants, park hours, verbiage and more verbiage and yet NOT ONE WORD about the native peoples that once used Rochester as its hunting and burial grounds.  How sad.  It looks like Rochester is just too progressive, too busy, too "white" to acknowledge that a park located on its highest point was once used as an Indian burial site.