A Tiny Example of “Fighting” in the Way of Allah and of Those Who are Oppressed
Blog Post 60
March 29, 2023
The holy month of Ramadhan quickly approached as my husband Ali
was fighting for his life in the hospital. Al-Hamdulillah, he spent a week
there and has returned home to recuperate. Allah Subhanahu wa ta'ala
has made our bodies, hearts, minds and souls in a way that can heal
themselves. And with the knowledge and devotion that our Sustainer
has bestowed on those entrusted to administer life-saving medications,
procedures and care, we fully understand how His Hand was on theirs during this time. We want to thank everyone for their duas, visits, phone calls, emails, video calls, texts, gifts, cards, love, concern and support and ask Allah to reward you amply. It made a great difference and we know prayer works! We also want to wish everyone a spiritual month of fasting, worship, reflection and good deeds, inshallah. And please continue to have hope. Our lives are in Allah's Hands.
Recently we finished rereading Dee Brown’s 1970 in-depth book, “Bury My Heart at Wounded Knee: An Indian History of the American West,” this time in the 40th anniversary edition of 2009, The Illustrated Edition, enhanced with more than 300 photographs, including of
people, maps and drawings, plus essays and excerpts.
It is a must-read for everyone who cares about humanity,
oppression and justice and Allah’s Subhanahu wa ta’ala injunctions to us to act as vicegerents on Earth. It feels wrong to ease into Ramadhan and perform the obligatory and supplemental and recommended actions, including our speech, day by day until Eid al-Fitr without learning about, remembering, praying for and assisting the Native Peoples in our world, and in fact, all of the oppressed peoples. For isn’t that what we are called to do by Allah Subhanahu wa ta’ala in the Holy Qur’an?
“And how can you not fight in the way of Allah
and of those who are oppressed among the men
and the women and the children, those who cry,
‘O our Sustainer, lead us forth [to freedom]
out of this land [society] whose people are
oppressors [occupiers] and appoint for us
a guardian from Yourself and appoint for us
a helper from Yourself.” - The Holy Qur’an 4:75
It feels appropriate and timely to publish the letter my husband Ali and I wrote to the National Park Service in Ohio after visiting the ill-named “Hopewell Culture National Historical Park” in the summer of 2018. The United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) is now in the progress of deciding whether they will designate it – including all of the nine sites named Hopewell Ceremonial Earthworks – as a world historical site.
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August 29, 2018
National Park Service
Hopewell Culture National Historical Park
The Ohio History Connection
Dear Sirs/Madams,
We had the honour to visit the Hopewell Culture National Historic Park in Chillicothe, Ohio, this summer. It is a spiritual, inviolable place and, as we walked in the light gentle rain among the 23 mounds of the Mound City Group, we thought about the people who built the “ceremonial” centre, those who are and were buried there, their love for the Creator, the Earth and people, the occasions for gathering and community building, and the descendants of these ancient people. We learned in the museum and the video about the people, who lived, worked, traded, worshipped, prayed, travelled, built, created, socialized, loved and played 2,200 to 1,500 years ago. We were overcome with the people’s earthworks’ celestial alignments and their “deep understanding of complex astronomical cycles,” “sophisticated math and geometry,” engineering and architectural feats, magnificent artwork and extensive trade network. The native people were and continue to be inspirational, creative, intuitive, insightful, dedicated, religious and artistic, as well as intellectual and original geniuses.
The disrespect that the American government, especially by the construction of Camp Sherman during world war I, and regular people, such as farmers, surveyors and builders, displayed, and continue to display, toward the native people of the Americas was also evident at the historic park. While it is important that the U.S. government, and all of us, protect and inform the public about the native people who lived in the area, it is repugnant that the people have been named after a white man who owned the land on which the people call sacred. We made this clear to the two rangers in the visitor’s center, one of whom said, “That’ll be an uphill battle” or something to that effect.
“The Hopewell World” and “Hopewell Culture” are big and bold on the national historic park’s brochure. Did captain Mordecai Hopewell ask for his name to be used to describe the native people? Why do a whole people, where the Mound City Group is located, carry the name of a white man who owned only a section of the land, along the north fork of Paint Creek, in the late 1800s, while the people lived there so many hundreds of years ago? Our “I didn’t know that” moment that led “to a deeper understanding of America’s past” was “I didn’t know they’re called Hopewelians.” and our “deeper understanding” was “Another case of white supremacy.”
Certainly, the native architects of the amazing earthworks and mounds are a national treasure and reflect America’s heritage. But it is also clear that the people and their descendants were, and continue to be, victims of genocides, European diseases, racism and white supremacy. When the U.S. government decided to set aside the national historic park, to showcase the archaeological finds and their “expertise” on the native people’s way of life, it didn’t seem to matter what the people were called. It is always sad to us when we see items in museums that belonged to people who were “lost” and “vanished” and to hear non-native people’s suppositions and interpretations about how and why the native people thought and acted.
To declare that the native people did not have an artisan class, were not structured enough to allow for one and “were still hunter-gatherers and gardeners living in scattered hamlets” is a bit too much. People who are in tune with the spiritual world, close to the Earth and have sophisticated belief systems about their purpose for living, their social and political relationships, responsibilities and rights and their lives in the Hereafter can create fine art. Just because archaeologists, social scientists and “experts” find it “astounding” that native people so long ago could display such “awesome craftsmanship” only show how little we really know about it all.
We feel disheartened that the “rich collection of artifacts,” referred to as made of “exotic materials,” are owned by the U.S. government and are even in the British Museum, thanks to Dr. Davis, rather than being placed in safe-keeping with the descendants of the people who made them. Geoffrey Sea, of the Adena Core organization, writes that, from at least 1,000 BCE to 500 CE, the Algonquian builders were not distinct from the “Adena” people, who were named after Ohio’s sixth governor’s plantation when an earthen mound was excavated there in 1901. Although “Aden” means mountain in Algonquian, the people did not call themselves that. Henry Schoolcraft, who died in 1864, learned from Delaware elders that the oldest tribe in North America were the Alli or Alleg people (hence Alleghany) and he stated that the “Adena” were those people. The descendants of the mound builders in Ohio include the Anishinaabe (Anishinaabeg), Shawnee, Miami, Meskwaki (Fox), Asakiwaki (Sak/Sac/Sauk), Kickapoo, Ojibwe and other related tribes. The artifacts and remains of the native people belong with their descendants, not in other people’s museums nor disrespectfully collecting dust on shelves.
Advising visitors to “stroll reverently amongst the mounds” and that the Mound City Group is “still considered a sacred place by many people” is admirable. Who considers it a sacred place and why? What does sacred mean? For us, it means that the first people lived and died on the land on which we now have plowed under, concreted, decimated and polluted. It means that the first people who flourished here are no more because they were wiped out by “fully agricultural and politically more structured” people who took over the land, caring little about the ceremonies, spirituality and humanity of the people they replaced, while using their travel routes, stealing their tools, utensils and ornaments and desecrating their remains and resting places through “intensive agriculture,” hatred and neglect.
Placing our value systems on others is never good. A sedentary lifestyle, devoid of beauty, peace and love for other than ourselves, obtaining food and material comforts from other people’s labour, and embracing machines and fossil fuels to run our lives and our air conditioning, automobiles, cell phones and the internet, may be what we’ve evolved into. But a hunter-gatherer, gardener, artisan, spiritual community that traversed the land from the Rocky Mountains to the Atlantic Ocean, from the Great Lakes to the Gulf of Mexico and through the Appalachian Mountains, trading, visiting, talking, sharing and gathering two-thirds of the eastern North American people together for special occasions, such as death, at a centralized space sounds like a superior way to live and die. It’s clear that people like the Shriver family, who “plowed right over the walls and mounds of Mound City Group for fifty years,” did not view the earthen structures as sacred, a treasure nor their heritage and did not value the people who built them that way either.
We are requesting that to honour the native people, they should be known by another name. Why the Mound City Group National Monument was changed to Hopewell is beyond us. We would have thought that by 1992, people were more advanced, less ethnocentric and showed due respect to native people. To call a whole group of people and their culture “Hopewellian,” after a white man and his farm field, is utterly unjust. It is a travesty, ignorant and self-righteous and reeks of white supremacy. Why the name hasn’t been changed by now is unreal and shows the true motivation of those who want to maintain and preserve the sites. The Honor the Earth Fund (HEF) has voiced their dismay over the “Hopewell” name. Winona LaDuke, HEF director, and Tara Zhaabowekwe, HEF’s national campaign director, said, “It is important that this nomination [UNESCO national heritage site] does not honor the historical figure directly responsible for the desecration of these burial mounds.” Geoffrey Sea said, “(Hopewell’s) only contribution was to allow the looters to come onto his property and dig up the graves in the big mounds on the property which had been protected by the family who had lived there for decades before Hopewell bought the property. (The looters) completely destroyed that site when they came in.” Chief Glenna Wallace, of the Eastern Shawnee Tribe, said the earthworks are the heirlooms of her people and Ohio the Shawnee homeland.
Names have meaning and the name of a people must reflect their culture and beliefs. Certainly before UNESCO recognizes and certifies the earthworks as a world heritage site, the offensive name needs to be removed and those who are nominating the sites should re-evaluate their intentions to make sure they are truly in line with the sacredness of the area and preservation of the past and not for financial gain, such as jobs and the travel and tourism industry, for Ohio. Rather, Adena Core advocates for the “ownership, management, preservation, and disposition of sacred sites, remains, and artifacts” to be in the hands of native people. We agree. More non-native research is not needed, but consultation with native people, especially the descendants and elders, is to ensure that the national park lives up to its mandate of preserving heritage and memorializing the people who once walked the land and laid (lay) resting under the mounds. Their souls are watching what is happening and we’re certain they know no Hopewell, but rather they know us and have entrusted their earthworks and remains to those who come after.
Sincerely,
Ali and Laila Hasib
cc:
Dan Smith
Deputy Director
National Park Service
U.S. Department of the Interior
1849 C Street NW
Washington, DC 20240
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April Slayton
Assistant Director, Communications
National Park Service
U.S. Department of the Interior
1849 C Street NW
Washington, DC 20240
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Jewell Harris
Acting Superintendent
Hopewell Culture National Historical Park
16062 State Route 104
Chillicothe, OH 45601-8694
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Susan Knisley
Supervisory Park Ranger
Hopewell Culture National Historical Park
16062 State Route 104
Chillicothe, OH 45601-8694
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Dr. Bret J. Ruby
Archaeologist/Chief Resource Management
Hopewell Culture National Historical Park
16062 State Route 104
Chillicothe, OH 45601-8694
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Burt Logan
Executive Director & CEO
The Ohio History Connection
Ohio History Center
800 E. 17th Avenue
Columbus, Ohio 43211
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Jackie Barton
Director of Historic Sites & Facilities
The Ohio History Connection
Ohio History Center
800 E. 17th Avenue
Columbus, Ohio 43211
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Stacey Halfmoon
Director of American Indian Relations
The Ohio History Connection
Ohio History Center
800 E. 17th Avenue
Columbus, Ohio 43211
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Winona LaDuke
Honor the Earth Foundation Director
and
Tara Zhaabowekwe
HEF’s National Campaign Director
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Chief Glenna Wallace
Of the Eastern Shawnee Tribe
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Geofrrey Sea
https://www.facebook.com/groups/AdenaCore/about/
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Translation from the Qur’an
Taken from Muhammad al-Asi. (2013). The Ascendant Qur’an: Realigning Man to the Divine Power Culture (Volume 7: Al-Nisa’: 36-85). Institute of Contemporary Islamic Thought. pp. 234-245, 270-271, 279-281. Accessed from https://archive.org/details/the-ascendant-qur-an-realigning-man-to-the-divine-power-culture-volume-4_full/the-ascendant-qur-an-realigning-man-to-the-divine-power-culture-volume-7_full/page/n261/mode/2up
Further Resources
Glaser, Susan. (December 23, 2022). Ohio poised to get its first UNESCO World Heritage site as soon as next year, at Hopewell Ceremonial Earthworks. Cleveland.com. Accessed from https://www.cleveland.com/travel/2022/12/ohio-poised-to-get-its-first-unesco-world-heritage-site-as-soon-as-next-year-at-hopewell-ceremonial-earthworks.html
National Park Service. (March 24, 2022). National Park Service announces nomination of ancient Ohio earthworks to become America’s next UNESCO World Heritage Site. www.nps.gov. Accessed from https://www.nps.gov/orgs/1207/hopewell-ceremonial-earthworks-unesco-nomination.htm
Reeves, Shelby. (March 25, 2022). Nomination of Hopewell Ceremonial Earthworks to World Heritage List could double area tourism. Chillicothe Gazette. Accessed from https://www.chillicothegazette.com/story/news/2022/03/25/hopewell-earthworks-world-heritage-designation-could-double-area-tourism/7152421001/
U.S. Department of the Interior. (January 30, 2008). Hopewell Ceremonial Earthworks. UNESCO. Accessed from https://whc.unesco.org/en/tentativelists/5243/