Civic duty drew me downtown on this cold, rainy morning. The line to get into the courthouse wrapped nearly around the block, so I knew it was going to be a pretty long day. Since I was in the middle of that line, I knew I’d have quite a bit of free time while they finished processing the rest of the potential jurors.
So I walked through the rose garden and the old Huron cemetery. The rickety wooden stairs on the path had tree roots growing through them. Many of the boards were splintered and quite a few were missing, meaning either stepping in the mud, or stretching a bit in order to reach the next plank.
“Is this what we think of our history?” I wondered to myself. Is this spiritual place of rest and peace, which is completely in the shadow of the casino, doomed to disrepair and disregard as we build around it?
What a shame, that one of my Native American classmates, who bless her soul, worked for the state of Kansas, had to endure the ignorance of co-workers who did not know what a pow-wow was… in the state of Kansas (which was named for the Kansa Tribe).
What a shame that most of us can name our favorite Kansas City Chief, but not one of the chiefs who led local tribes.
What a shame that “I’ve got Indian in my family” is used to explain why our hair is so long, and not why our spirits are so strong.
My heart usually breaks when I visit cemeteries, but in that moment, I shed no tears. I pulled my jacket tighter to ward off the wind and rain that had grown a bit stronger while I walked. I stood. I prayed. I said thank you to those who had built the city that I call home.
Then I headed back where I came from, this time choosing to walk the paved sidewalk instead of the busted up bridge, merely out of convenience. (I had on real shoes that day.) On one hand, I felt like I was disrespecting the path that the ancestors built. But on the other, I realized that because they built at all, that my journey could be that much smoother.
So I made my way back to the Wyandotte County Courthouse (named for the Wyandot tribe) determined to honor history by making a little history of my own.
Mama Radford
TheWRITEaddiction.com 
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