Native Americans Pow-Wow About the Oxford Mound
March 13th, 2010
Moses Brings Plenty came from South Dakota to protest the destruction of the Oxford Native American ceremonial mound…
by Glynn Wilson
JACKSONVILLE, Ala. – Native Americans traveled from as far away as South Dakota and South Carolina to attend the first Native American education and preservation day in the Public Square here in this quaint college town in the Appalachian foothills, after a call went out about the pending destruction of yet another traditional burial ground and ceremonial mound just down the road in Oxford.
Moses Brings Plenty, 40, a Lakota born on the Pine Ridge Indian Reservation in South Dakota, travels the country working for Native American civil rights.
When asked what he thought of the mayor of Oxford selling the land for a strip mall and Wal-mart on a burial ground and a Sam’s Club from a ceremonial mound, Mr. Plenty showed no anger. He discussed his understanding that the burial ground is now a total loss to history, and that stopping the complete destruction of the ceremonial mound will be an uphill battle.
“Once a traditional site is taken away, it is gone forever,” he said, along with it’s connection to the past for future generations. “If that keeps happening you can say goodbye to the human race.”
Yet ultimately, he said, the controversy creates an opportunity to start a new dialogue about the future of human relations — if people will take the time to listen and not just fight.
“We can start to change and the people can take back the government of this country from the corporations,” Mr. Plenty said.
In the attempt to communicate with and send a message to the good Christian people of Alabama who go along with the destruction of Native sites and culture for the sake of short term profits, he compared the sites to the grave of Jesus.
“What if Jesus lived to be 100-years old instead of 33, and someone came along and put a strip mall over his grave site? That is what it is for us,” he said. “Would the people stand for that?”
Somehow, after hundreds of years of the abuse of his people by those of European decent and everything else that’s gone wrong with American-style democracy, he still has hope that a new government can be created in the United States “based on honesty, love and compassion.”
“If the people do that — they can and they will — we can begin to create a world where no human being will ever have to suffer racism again.”
Craig Talbot, 49, traveled from Loris, South Carolina for the Pow-Wow to make a statement about the battle for the Oxford Mound. He set up a traditional Waccamaw teepee for people to experience and performed traditional medicine all day.
Talbot goes by the traditional name “One Who Talks to Doves.” More information about his tribe can be found online at Waccamaw.org.
Moses Brings Plenty can be found online at MoBringsPlenty.Com.
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Tags: Oxford Mound
March 13th, 2010 at 6:15 pm
I am actively pestering Scott Simon at NPR to pick up your stories about this, Glynn. It’s important, as Moses Brings Plenty notes, not just for Native Americans but for all human beings.
Thanks for staying on this story.
March 14th, 2010 at 12:02 pm
Yes, please publish my name. It is Karen Tipton from Alabama and I have always believed in the civil rights of the Indians now called Native Americans. Anyone’s cemetary is their sacred ground and should be respectful of and should not walk on nor especially build anything on it. What are you people thinking of? ! Do we not have enough Wal-Marts in this world and concrete jungles? Build beside it, but not over it! What is wrong with people that they cannot use even common sense?
March 14th, 2010 at 12:12 pm
Sorry, but my computer messed up what I was writing. The last sentence “What is wrong with people that they cannot use even common sense?” I am appalled that people still do these things. Are we not in the year 2010? And even if we weren’t, where are our values and human rights? Think of others and not just of yourself and the almighty dollar. You, to, will have to stand before Him and be judged one day. What will be your excuse?
March 14th, 2010 at 1:11 pm
Driving down Highway 21 from Jacksonville to Oxford yesterday, I passed no less than four Wal-marts. Check a Google map to see how few miles that is.
Wal-mart opens more stores than it needs in an area to put any competing small business out of business, then closes them all and builds a Super Wal-mart in the middle, creating suburban blight with their empty buildings.
That is their corporate strategy since Sam Walton died. Only a few communities have successfully stood up to them over the years.
March 14th, 2010 at 6:17 pm
Businesses always listen to the sound of the cash register, and especially when they don’t hear the register ringing enough.
In the good old days consumers would organize boycotts of retailers who were pushing the envelope too far. Wal-Mart is in a lot of instances doing just that.
A good old fashioned boycott, perhaps with Native American groups in the lead, is just what is needed.
March 14th, 2010 at 7:38 pm
There are examples of communities where people kept out Wal-Mart. Easy to find in Google. I’m not in a Googling mood right now, so go for it.
Some successful boycotts too, but mostly from the right. The Baptists got after ‘em a few years ago. Can’t remember for what off the top of my head…
March 15th, 2010 at 11:04 am
There were successful labor-union led boycotts, along with union-owned cooperatives and banks, early in the 20th century in a number of places most notably Seattle and Minneapolis. But those were times when labor unions were highly organized and very political, and did not last even there much past the 1930s.
The trouble with a modern-day boycott, as you imply, is that there has to be an organization behind it for the effort to have any impact.
Native Americans, at least those who are officially “Indian” by virtue of membership in a federally-recognized tribe, are a small percentage of Alabama’s population. For them to lead a boycott would require some highly focused organizing, and the official tribal groups seem a lot more interested in their casino businesses right now than anything else.
This incident shows the need for a tough state antiquities law, something which, lacking some kind of organized boycotting or public grousing, will not happen. But it should. There are things that are important to preserve, and the historical remains of past Native American societies are certainly at the top of that list.
March 15th, 2010 at 5:01 pm
There are examples more recent than that when towns got together. No time to chase right now. Driving the new MacPorche on a winding mountain road with the music up loud, trying to find that magic space in time and place. That ain’t no cliche…
March 19th, 2010 at 11:18 pm
There are some folks on Facebook completely ignoring the main story of fighting the Oxford Mound, arguing about the meaning of the word Pow-Wow.
While that could have been an educational moment, it turned into a meme.
When I have time and get further into this story, I will flesh this story out a bit more. But not tonight…
Those who know me also know that, one of the reasons I am interested in this story as a writer, is my own search for Cherokee ancestry. I’ve told this story in other places in this archive, but for here and now:
My grandmother on my father’s side was no doubt of Cherokee decent. I have photos and physical descriptions as well as a full family tree on the Love family from St. Clair County, Alabama. I’ve seen the Love names in the books of my Cherokee brother Wayne Perkins, who played with the Rolling Stones and others, who is a card carrying member of the Wolf Clan out of the old Cherokee Capitol, Rome, Georgia.
I plan to get the DNA test ASAP.
Besides, anyone who meets up with me in summer when my hair is long and my face is more red than tanned in the summer, and I’m not talking about sunburn, can see it in my face. Then there’s my warrior-like spirit as a hard-charging reporter.
I am at a point in my life when I want, no, I need, to track these connections to the past. Like I said in the original A River Runs Through It column, I feel it in my bones…
There must be a vision quest in here somewhere : )
March 20th, 2010 at 12:42 pm
Glynn is trying hard to get to bottom of what is really going on at Signal Hill. It’s unfathomable to Glynn, archaeologists and Indians that we are forced to pay the high price for Leon Smith, the Office of Achaeological Research and the development companies to destroy one of the largest sacred rock mounds in the southeast or the huge Davis Farm site across the street.
The people of Central Alabama are allowing our sacred sites stripped bare by bulldozers and backhoes without respect or any consequences. It befuddles me that so many in Alabama are quick to claim Indian descent proudly and yet destroy their own heritage for Wal-mart, Sam’s Club or a sports complex?
Alabamaians must escape the notion that a site isn’t sacred unless it has documented human remains. Having burials in a site allows us to protect an area using both state and federal laws like NAGPRA, but we need stronger laws on the state and local level. And, we need to demand ethical, moral behavior from our elected leaders. The multi thousands of dollars archaeological report for Signal Hill should make the people of Oxford and the state rise up against their hard earned paychecks being used for a suspect document that allows them to destroy a beautiful, sacred mound.
But wait! Destroying Signal Hill isn’t enough for Leon Smith and his posse of developer buddies!
The Office of Archaeological Research allowed them to totally destroy- forever- the amazing Davis Farm Mound and village site to build a sports complex and then claim they have no idea what happened to it?! What? They’ve even proclaimed Signal Hill isn’t worth saving because they themselves denuded it and made it a hideous mess. Now they claim nobody knows anything about the destruction of the Davis Farm mound site and yet those responsible are so painfully clear? What has happened to consequences, people?
This looming rock mountian of an Indian mound is just as sacred and deserving of protection as Moundville yet is, right now being gouged, ripped into shreds by heavy equipment and hauled away even while promises are made and broken by Leon Smith and his cronies.
Indians, many other other archaeologists and the Alabama Historical Commission know Signal Hill is a manmade, sacred Indian mound site fitting within a vast network of thousands of years’ old sacred mounds stretching from Florida to Illinois, South America into North America like a spiderweb of cites. These are what is left of the very cities the first Europeans traded upon exploring the south in the 1600′s. Signal Hill Mound is an amazingly huge collection of sacred stones taken there by my ancestors and placed on the hill top with intention. Mounds like Signal Hill are precious and to suggest it be treated any differently than a Church, Synagogue, Easter Island statues or Stonehenge is willfully ignorant and disrespectful.
The continued destruction of sacred Indian sites in Alabama is an outrage the world should know and Glynn is doing his best to get behind this horror. This is the most decent, respectful article I’ve seen about the wanton destruction of sacred Signal Hill mound. For anyone to complain about semantics while sacred sites are being bulldozed is pure foolishness and a laughable attempt to deflect from their own poor behavior or lack of common sense. Three cheers for what Glynn is trying to do to save Alabama’s heritage and natural wonders.
Donna Knoke Cobb, MA
Maskoki Creek and Archaeozoologist
March 25th, 2010 at 4:08 pm
My heart is with you for the protection of this site. There were several sacred sites in and surrounding a surface and underground mine that a WV-based company recently opened in our corner of SE Ohio. I tried my best to push for protection through existing laws, but there was no way. We had a meeting with the regulatory agencies and archeologists and they told me that they only way these burial sites would be protected from the mining would be if the archeologists could excavate them and gain more knowledge about the original people here. You heard me right. Either way they would be destroyed. You should have seen the greed in their eyes. There was nothing we could do through the currently existing laws. I will say that one of my own family cemeteries going back to Revolutionary War time now has a high wall three feet from the head stones.
I hope that you are able to build a successful relationship with the people who have the power to make the right decision to protect the site at Oxford instead of building another Wally-World. The laws won’t do it, but maybe appealing to people’s sense of decency and sacredness will.
Good luck,
Elisa
March 26th, 2010 at 11:50 am
When I was working with groups to save mounds in Ohio, I learned some very interesting facts about mounds from American Indian elders. Their oral tradition states that the mounds were built to help maintain the weather patterns. Is it a wonder we talk about “global warming” so much?