Drawn To The City

Drawn To The City. . , As the years pass and native people again find traveling easier, many descendants of the first Menatay inhabitants are returning to their native land. Here they meet native people from many nations. Once, Native Americans, viewed as exotic people, were brought here to take part in Wild West shows. We now see diplomatic visits by such contemporary natives as Rigoberto Menchu, the Mayan who won the Nobel Peace Prize, gatherings as American Indian Community House, and ceremonies like the one led by Chief Richard Snake, a Moraviantown Delaware, to give Inwood Hill Park back its original name Shorakapok (edge of the river)., Red Cloud, the Lakota chief, was one of those who visited New York to speak for his people. On June 16, 1870, he spoke at the Great Hall of Cooper Union to an audience divided between those wanting to see a “real wild Indian” and those believing justice and understanding would solve the problems between white and Indian., In a similar vein, October 22, 1991, Thomas Banyaca, a Hopi spiritual elder, made his fourth pilgrimage to bring his people’s message of peace to the United Nations – foretold in the ancient Hopi prophecies as “the great house of mica on the eastern shore where nations come together to solve the world’s problems without war.”