News
Fort Phil Kearny Sponsors Event
Medicine Wheel and Prayer Offerings after the Summer Solstice
On Thursday, August 12, Dave McKee and Donovin Sprague will speak on the Bighorn Medicine Wheel the “Lakota & Cheyenne History on the Bozeman Trail”
The talks will be on Thursday, August 12, at 6 pm, in the Kearney Community Hall, 1/2 mile off I-90 – Exit 44 (about a mile east of Fort Phil Kearny)
According to the news release about the event, Dave McKee served as the Bighorn National Forest liaison to the National Park Service and American Indian representatives in completion of the nomination for the Medicine Wheel /Medicine Mountain National Historic Landmark which is a sacred landscape for American Indians.
His program will cover current management and preservation of the Landmark. Dave is a member of the Wyoming Archaeological Society, president of the Fort Phil Kearny/Bozeman Trial Association, and co-chairman of the Bozeman National Historic Trail project. Dave and his wife Susan live in Sheridan, Wyoming.
Donovin Sprague was born and raised on the Cheyenne River Sioux Reservation in South Dakota and is a member of the Minnicoujou Lakota.
He is a university instructor, historian, author of ten books, and currently teaches history, political science including Wyoming Tribal History, American Indian History & Culture, Tribal Law, Treaties, & Government, and Plains Indian Art, among other courses at Sheridan College.
Donovin serves on the Fort Phil Kearny/Bozeman Trail Association Advisory Board and the Bozeman National Historic Trail Advisory Committee.
The event is free and open to the public.
Eliot Kalman
August 8, 2021 at 7:32 pm
It has been many years since I last visited The Medicine Wheel, so I’m not certain how the possible rearrangement of the stones by individuals with righteous or otherwise motivation might have happened, but assuming it hasn’t changed that much, the choice of photographs to accompany this article does a disservice to the reader. Like, for example, the Serpent Mound in Ohio, one really doesn’t understand the site without perspective from above. Without seeing it from on high, the beautiful Serpent Mound looks like a meandering grassy knoll, and the beautiful Medicine Wheel just looks like a formless assemblage of rocks. If one spends a sufficient amount of time in either place, one can get some idea of what the originators of the Serpent Mound and the Medicine Wheel were conveying, but a photo or two of either, except from above, just won’t do it