Wednesday, May 15, 2024

Two Native ceremonial stone structures in Littleton destroyed by vandals

From Dan Boudillion:

Dear Friends of the Nashobah Praying Indians,

 

I’m sad to report that two of the Native Ceremonial Stone Structures at the Sarah Doublet Forest in Littleton have been demolished by vandals. 

 

Here are some pictures, and comments to follow. 

 

  

This is a donation-niche structure.  Offerings are placed in the niche. 


This is how it looks today:


This is a pedestal boulder (dolmen) on top of a larger boulder: 


This is how it looks today – pried off and gone. 

Smaller, yet no less spiritually significant, here is a smooth river rock placed as an offering on a turtle effigy. 

It is only a few yards from the donation-niche structure.


Here is how it looks today, the offering stone has been taken.   (I placed the pinecone there for scale.)


Comments:

 

The donation niche and pedestal stone are unique and rare forms of Native ceremonial stonework.  Destroying these took effort.  The pedestal boulder would have taken considerable effort and a pry bar.  The donation niche wasn’t simply toppled down the hill, one of its support rocks was pulled out of the ground and toppled down the hill as well. 

 

A close examination of the leaf cover at the donation niche suggests the destruction happened before winter snowfall.  For the pedestal stone, I recall seeing it last year. 

 

It is hard to know how to best steward these types of sites on conservation and town lands.  The ongoing conversation in the stewardship community for a number of years is how can we serve the public and protect and preserve these types of sites at the same time: essentially, do we educate, or do we keep them secret? 

 

It’s almost a moot point.  No amount of education or secrecy will protect things in the open woods.  Both means might cut down problems in their own way, but anything just sitting out there in the open woods is at risk, be it to malicious destruction or simple careless and unintentional vandalism. 

 

I don’t have answers to this conundrum.  But I do want to share what happened, and the sadness of it.  I also want to keep the conversation going. 

 

I’d also like to note that vandalism of Native sites has occurred in Acton and Harvard as well.  Its not unique to any one place, it is a product of human nature. 

 

I’ve brought notice of the damage to the Littleton Conservation Trust.  The LCT is in the process of making some changes that they feel will help mitigate against these kinds of things.  They are doing their best stewardship, but like I said, no one can fully protect things in the open woods.  I’ve also let the Harvard Conservation Trust know as well, they have Native sites on their lands and have been part of the conversations of how to preserve and protect.  Bettina Abe and I will be carrying the conversation forward in Acton soon as well. 


At the Trail Trees & Sacred Stones talk that Strong Bear and I did in Littleton on April 28, we showed pictures of vandalism that had already occurred.  It’s a timely conversation, its an ongoing problem. 

 

Strong Bear Medicine and I, in collaboration with the Littleton Conservation Trust, have been working on the Prayers in Stone Project – a stewardship project focused on Native ceremonial stone sites.  Perhaps the Prayers in Stone Project can be a means by which the local communities can work together to preserve and protect these fragile sites and their heritage in the Nashoba Valley.

 

If you have a position in your town on a town board or a non-profit group that is involved in conservation and interested in preserving Native sites – or have a position that supports this – and would like to open dialog and think of ideas on how we can best preserve Native sites in the local area, please contact me. 

 

Best wishes,

 

Dan Boudillion

Secretary

Friends of the Nashobah Praying Indians 

8 comments :

  1. I have several things to say, and need to do some more thinking. I hope other people will express thoughts on this. If you disagree with me, let me know - so we can try to figure out what is right.

    First, I want to say that this is criminal/psychotic behavior and one thing needed is to put a serious prison sentence on anyone caught doing it. Something like arson (20 years).

    I wish I had some insight into why someone would do this. Dan mentions the significant effort needed to accomplish the destruction. It seems like real anger AND a genuine effort to communicate the anger. Why would someone be angry about this? In my opinion it would have to be someone close to the subject.

    Were the vandalized structures shown to anyone? How did the vandal know where to find them? How did the vandal even recognize something that took us so long to see? I think it must be a person who knows the woods or who went on one of the tours.

    Solutions, if there are any, might depend on understanding what kind of psychosis we are dealing with. Anyway, here are some thoughts:

    1) Put a few trail cameras around, hidden but announce, loud and clear, that the area is "under video surveillance".

    2) Open the main trail at designated times, and have a volunteer guardian/interpreter. Put a video camera where you can monitor the parking areas.

    3) Make sure the Littleton newspapers carry the story. See if you can get the Globe to cover it.

    4) Lead a "vandalism" tour.

    5) Petition the state government to accept responsibility for site protection. In particular, such that law enforcement resources get devoted to tracking down the vandals. I bet there is not much budget for that!

    6) Install sensors, detect when people are present, keep an eye on things in general without being Orwellian [is that possible?].

    7) Rebuild. Major archaeological sites, are often largely reconstructed.

    l8) For people whose spirituality includes interactions with ceremonial stonework, keep some secrets.

    For example, an easily accessible public site could have a "public access" portion and a "by appointment only" portion. Install sensors and signage around the latter. I think something like this is practiced in the Southwest.

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  2. Anonymous6:52 AM

    Thank you so much for this conversation. I struggle with the same issues. I live in Wayland. My backyard is Conservation land owned by Weston. I know from conversations I have had with the Admin. of ConCom and Weston Forest & Trails that they don’t want to talk about any of the “stuff” I have seen and recognize.

    They employ a policy of “leave no trace”; ergo, if they see that a cairn is being built they will knock it down. The Weston Town Forests are saturated with Indigenous CSL which are being studiously ignored. In fact, if you ask most people, they will tell you the walls were cobbled together by Puritan farmers. There is zero appreciation about anything else. Prof. Curtiss Hoffman walked with me to a place I find very auspicious and confirmed my understanding.

    As a result, I walk a line between knowing there’s still great apathy and hostility about recognizing this part of New England history and my sense of outrage no one knows.

    I agree vandalism of this kind needs to be treated with the respect it deserves. The vandals should be persecuted to the full extent of the law. As with any other country with Indigenous history, people need to be taught the truth and respect. And that begins in Elementary School. Pay attention, Massachusetts. Live up to your name.

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  3. Anonymous1:29 PM

    Neo-Puritans, more or less, maybe?

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  4. It could be neo-Indians or maybe traditionalists who disagree with the direction their beliefs are headed. I agree with Pwax, it’s someone close to the subject.

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  5. Anonymous6:55 PM

    Amazing. I was in these very sacred woods exploring more today. It’s such a spiritually endowing landscape, once you are switched on to what is surrounding you on these walks.

    I was pondering this very subject as I walked some of these walls and cairns and stone prayers and it popped into my head a line I had heard during a lecture video ‘once one of these sites has been moved, altered, or destroyed, the prayer is broken’

    I will say that after exploring and trekking around the hills on which some of these sites are located, that any sort of malicious destruction taking place must have some intent. Otherwise, although I was once a small boy that was intrigued with smashing things up, toppling rocks was very low on my list. Anti climactic! We wanted to break bottles!

    With that being said, it becomes, as Peter said, some disturbing, psychotic behavior. It would seem as though someone is finding these sites thru others, learning about their deep meanings (to those that choose to believe these beautiful people had deep traditions with deep meaning) and it somehow conflicts with their beliefs?

    If it continues to occur, especially if it seems to start occurring at different sites around the area, then we are almost certainly looking at a well informed serial vandal.

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  6. Nicholas6:58 AM

    Once I read thru the comments left by others, I had a disturbing thought cross my mind…..
    It seems to be unanimous that these outrageous and idiotic acts of vandalism are directed towards some unknown source of rage and discontent with these sacred sites existing in our woods.

    My thought was this; Does anyone find it possible, especially one that has done work with people from the town of Acton/Littleton/Stow/Concord etc, that it could be a person(s) connected to or working for one of these towns?

    Although totally unconnected, I was a part of building a renegade concrete skatepark in Worcester that grew to be a full fledged building project that the city condoned and we received money to build! After years of building, this all culminated in some dirty doings behind the scenes and when the new ballpark was proposed, our little community park was right in the way. A few people in office from that district called in some favors from a relative with heavy machinery, and one morning, without a word of warning, frantic calls went out from the neighborhood that they were demolishing our space. They were caught red handed and the story made the news. Park was still ruined, and they got what they wanted. Gentrification!

    Disturbing to think about, but possible. Thoughts?

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