Sometimes you see or hear something that just makes you stop and angrily shake your head.
The other day Terry Thornton of Hill Country of Monroe County Mississippi sent an email
out about a post at the Deep Fried Kudzu blog. Seems that a 1500 year old Indian burial
mound in Oxford, Alabama is being destroyed and used as fill in the construction of a Sam's
Club. The owner of the blog is named Ginger and she went out to the site herself to check
out the damage and she took some pictures that are disturbing. There are two posts, one
with pictures of the mound before the demolition began and the second with pictures
showing how much damage has been done.
It's obviously an Indian mound but in the eyes of the city's mayor and Sam's Club, it's
not all that important, good only to use as filler for the construction. Of course, given that
Sam's Club is owned by Wal-Mart, which has been embroiled in fights over constructing
stores close by Civil War battlefields, I'm not surprised. In all these cases, local officials
and merchants are ready to sacrifice the history and heritage of our country in the name of
improving the local economy. In this case, something that has stood for centuries, a sacred
place to Native Americans, is being destroyed to make way for a store that more than likely
will be itself demolished in less than a century to make way for some other enterprise.
This is wrong, folks. Once these places are destroyed, they cannot be replaced. And don't
think it can't effect you. There are plenty of incidents of church graveyards being uprooted, moved or paved over to make room for shopping centers and parking lots. And we all have
been shocked at the recent events at the cemetary near Chicago. Is this the type of society
we are becoming, where we are willing to tread on the bones of the dead in quest of the
almighty dollar?
Visit Ginger's blog. She's posted the email addresses of the parties involved in this incident.
Look at those pictures, see how we are destroying the past, and then send emails to voice your
concern!
1 comment:
Thanks for this post. I did read Ginger's and have passed it along. Shameful behavior. When we were over in the UK and visiting so many wonderful ancient sites my comment then was, "If these were in the states they would bull doze it down and built a Walmart." We have little respect for many of our historical sites. My Dad, who was such an enthusiastic Civil War buff, would donate money annually to save battlefields from such destruction.
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