By Heather Bellow Thursday, Jan. 5, 2016
Heather Bellow Photo
"A stand of hemlocks in
Otis State Forest in Sandisfield, which will be cleared for the proposed path
of Tennessee Gas Pipeline Company’s new storage loop. Native American Tribal
preservationists are concerned about the possible destruction or tampering with
sacred ceremonial stone sites along the 3.8-mile pipeline path and are working
with the Kinder Morgan subsidiary to identify and avoid them. But the company
says there are some that it may not be able to save."
Note:
At one time several years back, part of my job involved providing some "recreational driving around" therapy up in that Colebrook CT/Sandisfield MA area, often noting a great number of possible (well, obvious) features of an Indigenous Ceremonial Stone Landscape. While I'm gratified to find a corroborating second opinion (or is it a third opinion? - seems I recall photos of Peter's from up around there) that such features do occur in the area, it continues to be disturbing that “(t)he (MA) SHPO has a problem...acknowledging ceremonial stones...”
Which tribe is SHPO?
ReplyDeleteIt might be possible to fix that with some phone calls.
Thanks for posting. I live in Huntington, near Otis, and have passed this on to friends who have "features" on their property nearby. http://newenglandwoodland.blogspot.com
ReplyDelete"SHPO falls under the aegis of the Massachusetts Secretary of State William Galvin’s office. Spokesperson Brian McNiff said the office is reviewing the situation and that a statement is forthcoming," the article reads.
ReplyDeleteI remember you, newenglandwoodland. You had a nice stone bear photo I once commented on...
ReplyDeleteSHPO = State Historic Preservation Office
ReplyDelete"Yet the Stockbridge-Munsee Band of Mohican Indians Community was not given that opportunity early on, despite the Nation being the most “culturally affiliated” with this land, said the Nation’s tribal preservationist officer Bonney Hartley.
ReplyDelete“We’re not happy that they didn’t include us,” she said, adding that, since the Nation’s November notification of the field report, “relative to other pipeline company projects…that didn’t respect a different cultural viewpoint,” Kinder Morgan has stretched itself to avoid and even engineer the construction plans to work around or over stone features...Hartley made it clear that, with regard to its statements about the stone features, each Tribe is “representing its own sovereign nation. There’s not a consensus on this one.”
Hartley is based at a Stockbridge-Munsee satellite office in Troy, New York, set up one year ago, where she does “exactly this kind of work,” she said. “All our history before the 1850s is around here in the Hudson and Housatonic River valleys.”
Added later: if any part of CT is absent of ceremonial features it would be very strange. Maybe downtown Bridegeport?
ReplyDelete