COLUMBUS, Ohio (RNS) — Chief Glenna Wallace spent the summer solstice this past June walking the narrow asphalt path that encircles Serpent Mound, a low, serpentine wall of earth built by her ancestors hundreds or even thousands of years ago.

Wallace, who leads the Eastern Shawnee Tribe of Oklahoma, was joined by Chief Ben Barnes of the Shawnee Tribe, and the two talked to crowds of visitors to the historic site about their tribes’ connections to the mound and the 19th-century policies that forced them out of the area.

“We presented programs to let people know that the tribes still exist, the people still exist,” Wallace told Religion News Service in a recent phone call. “We are still alive, we are still active. Those are still spiritual places for us.”

Read more: https://religionnews.com/2021/12/21/how-ohios-indigenous-sacred-sites-became-a-religious-flashpoint/