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Restore the river
Along the cliffs at Pipestone National Monument south of the existing Winnewissa Falls, worn quartzite ledges reveal the visual memory of Pipestone Creek’s natural, original course and the spillway located below, according to Dr. Adam Fortunate Eagle Nordwall.
“While in a dream state the other night I envisioned the National Park Service restoring Winnewissa Falls to its original spillway located approximately 200 feet south of the existing man made channel.”
So begins a letter recently penned by Nordwall to Glen Livermont, superintendent of Pipestone National Monument. A sketch of Nordwall’s vision accompanied the letter.
Nordwall, 80, lives on Nevada’s Paiute-Shoshone Reservation but his formative years as the son of a Chippewa mother and Swedish father were spent at the Pipestone Indian Training School and that past seems to lure his attention and imagination again and again.
Early next year, the University of Oklahoma Press will publish his latest book, “Pipestone: A Boy’s Life in an Indian Boarding School.” A documentary of his life is now circulating among the Independent Film Festivals, “Contrary Warrior: The Life and Times of Adam Fortunate Eagle,” produced by John and Grace Ferry.
Nordwall is a loquaicious, entertaining and intelligent phone interview, so it’s not difficult to put him at the scenes of his well documented political stunts: he kicked-off the orchestration of the 19-month American Indian occupation of Alcatraz in 1969 by offering the federal government $24 in bead and red cloth for the island the government had declared surplus property; he visited Italy and Sweden and after stepping upon their shores in full American Indian dress, he “discovered” the land for American Indians.
The list goes on throughout eight decades of, “general political agitating with a big dose of satire,” as Nordwall has described his particular style of activism.
Closer to home, Nordwall had a hand in the founding of The Keepers of the Sacred Tradition of Pipe Makers, headquartered in Pipestone. And now he’s advocating the restoration of Winnewissa Falls at Pipestone National Monument to its natural course.
“As boarding school children at Pipestone, we had been told by the elders the government changed the original course of Pipestone Creek and The Falls with dynamite as a means of flood control. The government also allowed the railroad to build near the cliffs overlooking the quarries…The railroad is now gone, leaving little trace of its ever having been there. If only the government could restore the sacred Winnewissa Falls to its original location, it would enhance the natural beauty of the area for generations to come.”
Nordwall’s holds up as examples other restoration projects executed across the country by the federal government. In Sparks, Nev. the government is undertaking a $7.8 million restoration of the Truckee River, for example, that will restore natural, meandering twists that were straightened in the 1960s for flood control.
“Instead of letting it meander as the Great Spirit intended, they changed it,” Nordwall said about the Truckee restoration. “Built dams and diverted water and destroyed lakes. The story goes on and on how the Corps. of Engineers, in the early part of the century, they had dam fever.”
By government standards, Winnewissa Falls would be a very small restoration project that would bring federal funding into Pipestone, Nordwall said.
“This proposed restoration project would revitalize the area, enhance tourist potential along with providing an economic stimulus to the greater community of Pipestone,” Nordwall wrote.
Nordwall hasn’t lived in Pipestone since 1945, so a long-distance advocacy is about all he’s offering. What he’s hoping is that if he puts it out there, someone will get behind the merit of, “historical correction of an environmental and historical wrong,” he said.
Monument Superintendent Livermont said the idea of returning sacred sites to their natural state is an American Indian value that has been heeded by the National Park Service at the Monument
For instance, the new long-term management plan for the Monument, completed in October 2008, calls for the removal of the existing visitor center and parking lot from its current location adjacent to the quarries. The management plan includes that action as a result of meetings held with tribal elders and leaders. The focus of the visitor center relocation would be preservation of, “the setting, the site history, and the spiritual significance of the quarries as a source of pipestone.”
“The Park Service listened to them, so there is a precedent within the Monument that we respect the American Indian perspective,” Livermont said.
But waterway restorations based upon that American Indian perspective are also backed and reinforced by years of planning and science, Livermont said. Lacking that, Nordwall’s idea would not likely gain much traction.
Livermont did, however, counter with another cause for Nordwall, one equally close to his Pipestone boyhood: the former superintendent’s home of the old Indian Training School, a building that’s falling to ruins west of the current Minnesota West site.
Nordwall could not be contacted prior to publication to learn if Livermont’s proposal interested him. But who knows: this may not be the last heard from Fortunate Eagle.
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