“Do you know about the Big Red Rock?” After we exchange our usual greetings in Kaáⁿze íe, we switch back into English and my Elder asks me this question in his excited gravely and insistent voice. As soon as he asked and I answered that I did not, I knew that I soon would. What I did not know is that this question was the beginning of a journey of return to the roots of our people, roots which nourish and sustain us still. When I learn of “Big Red Rock” he is in Lawrence Kansas, having been kidnapped and taken there in 1929. Very quickly we start to call him in our language, Íⁿ’zhúje’waxóbe, and talk about him, too much. It means “sacred red rock”- the big is implied by the English habit of capitalizing pronouns. When I refer to Íⁿ’zhúje’waxóbe I always capitalize the word, even if only in my mind, implying a certain enormity. Within a week I called a tribal member, an auntie to myself, and who is working on a grant to get him back, sort of. I ask her to start simply by telling me the story, and among other things she tells me there are many of these rocks dotted around the plains, this one is ours. They are glacial era erratics; they are wanderers, they mark the way. Rock and roll. I volunteer my services. Somewhere Iⁿ’zhúje’waxóbe laughs.

Slowly things are starting to coalesce. The Kanza Heritage Society is watching the grant process in Lawrence, Kansas develop, and after reviewing the notes from the town meetings, the town is amenable to returning the rock back to the Kaw Nation. They also will apologize for the theft. It is a starting place.

I’m still waiting to meet Íⁿ’zhúje’waxóbe for the first time in person. There is another event which cannot be dismissed, something worldwide and epic which could change (is indeed changing?) the Western economy and way of life. There is a virus in the land, this is nothing new for our people, viral plague. The Nation closed the doors early, before the rest of the country.  So instead of taking the train back east from the foot of the big rocky mountains into the soft Kansas prairie to meet Íⁿ’zhúje’waxóbe and my Elders, we stay home this year, watching and waiting a little while longer.

Íⁿ’zhúje’waxóbe is also known as a red Sioux quartzite glacial erratic, native to eastern South Dakota and southwestern Minnesota. This boulder, and others like it, were pushed into what is now Kansas during the last ice age, between 600,000 and 1 million years ago. (For reference, scientists date the emergence of our human species, homo sapiens, to 315,000 years ago.) For hundreds of thousands of years, this boulder lay at the junction of Shunganunga creek and the Kansas river, near present-day Tecumseh, Kansas, until its removal to Robinson Park in 1929.

In preparation for the rematriation of Iⁿ ‘zhúje ‘waxóbe to Allegawaho Memorial Heritage Park, our team consulted with University of Kansas geology professors Andreas Möller and Georgios Tsoflias regarding the current stability of the Rock and the base within which it sits. Möller, an expert in Siouxan quartzite boulders, was concerned about some surface features in the boulder so Tsoflias agreed to conduct a ground-penetrating radar (GPR) examination of Iⁿ ‘zhúje ‘waxóbe to determine its internal structure and integrity. The GPR assessment provided assurance that the Rock’s internal structure is sound and that the proposed move, if conducted with all due care, should not harm the Rock. Additionally, the GPR assessment was able to provide some limited insights regarding the structure of the Rock’s base and how the Founders’ Memorial Plaque is affixed. Joshua Meisel, geography and geographic information systems instructor at Haskell Indian Nations University, has completed a three-dimensional model of the Rock’s current location utilizing drone imagery with the assistance of tribal college students.

In Lawrence, Kansas on the north end of Massachusetts street, just south of the bridge over the Kansas river, is Robinson Park, named after the state’s first governor and a former superintendent of Haskell Institute (at the time, it was a federal boarding school for Indigenous youth). In 1929, a large pink quartzite rock was erected in the park as a monument to the town’s “pioneers” and to celebrate the 75th anniversary of Lawrence’s founding. The City of Lawrence’s website in 2021 stated, “In an article in the Topeka State Journal on September 7, 1929, it was suggested to move the rock to the Statehouse grounds in Topeka because of its geological importance and that it was held in spiritual reverence by the Kanza Indians. Before Topekans could act, a man from Lawrence, with the aid of the Santa Fe Railway 200-ton crane moved the rock by rail and placed it in Robinson Park.”

In 1853, Congress authorized dispossessing Kansas’s Indigenous people and in 1854 Kansas territory was officially opened to non-Native settlement. This prompted the New England Immigrant Aid Company, commemorated on the plaque affixed to Íⁿ’zhúje’waxóbe, to establish Lawrence. One of the company’s leaders, Charles Robinson, would use his role in the town’s founding to amass a personal fortune in Indigenous land and eventually serve as the state’s first governor. Over the next two decades, Indigenous land holdings were significantly reduced in the state, with the Kanza, Shawnee, and Delaware forced to move again, this time to what we now call Oklahoma. For the Kanza, this means the loss of the last of their homeland.

In 1873 the Kanza were officially expelled from the state that bears their name. As was the case with all forced Indigenous migrations in the U.S., the result for the Kanza people was disease, death, and significant population loss. Between 1800 and the 1870s, their population had declined by over 1,000 leaving just over 500 Kanza survivors. By the late 1880s, on their Indian Territory (now Oklahoma) reservation, only 194 people remained. In 1902 Congress “legally obliterated the tribe” and allotted the Kaw reservation, meaning it was divided up into individually owned properties. Much of the former reservation was flooded when the Army Corps of Engineers built the Kaw Reservoir in the 1960’s. Consequently, the nation’s Council House and cemetery had to be relocated.

Despite these assaults the Kanza people endured. Today the Kaw Nation is a federally-recognized and self-governing nation with over 3,500 members. The nation holds 168 acres in Kansas, has a service area in Oklahoma, and is actively working towards economic sovereignty.