In the midst of the pain, in the land of that pains first blood, there was built a Healing Temple, on Land already Sacred to the People, the Timucua, for hundreds of years. It was built with stones quarried by Aztec and Timucua slave labor. The massive coquina blocks we carried and stacked, by hands and backs of the indigenous people. The Spanish called it the Castillo de San Marcos. When Spain ce
ded Florida to the U.S., the name was changed to Fort Marion. Under the Flag of the United States of America, the U.S. Army held, as Prisoners of War, the Chiefs and Warriors of the Seminole and the Yuchi, and then the Chiefs, Warriors, women, and children of the Kiowa, the Caddo, the Cheyenne, the Comanche, the Arapaho, and finally Geronimo's Chiricahua band of the Apache. When these men, women, and children died at the Fort, and hundreds did, they were buried in unmarked graves in the earthen embankments that surround the Fort. In the 20th century, the Army left and the National Park Service took over ownership and management of the site, and the renamed it the Castillo de San Marcos National Monument, and it has become the central tourist attraction in downtown St. Augustine, seeing more than 800,000 paying visitors each year. Four years ago, a party of descendants of the Kiowa, Arapaho, Cheyenne, Caddo, and Apache returned to St. Augustine, and for three days they visited. They held an open round dance, at an elementary school gymnasium downtown, and hundreds of local people joined them. On their final day, they returned to the Castillo, and with permission of the National Park Service, were given the Fort for a private and closed Healing ceremony. As they left, they told the friends they had made in St. Augustine that the Fort was now a Healing Temple for all nations, for all people. This is what we are doing now, with our facebook community, The International Native American Memorial. We are taking back what was built on Sacred Land of the Timucua, built by the enslaved hands of the Aztec and Timucua, taking back the U.S. Army Prisoner of War Camp of the Seminole, Yuchi, Kiowa, Arapahoe, Cheyenne, Caddo, Comanche, and the Chiricahua Apache, and giving it to the First Nations and Tribes of the Americas. We are surrounding the Fort with a Round Dance of Likes, and Shares, and Invites. We are asking the President of the United States of America, to cede the ownership to a Council of Nations and Tribes, thru a Presidential Executive Order. The Castillo de San Marcos is the oldest continuously operated, and functional, European held Fort in the United States of America, and St. Augustine is the oldest European held settlement in the Nation. After 500 years, it is time to Heal. It is time to be Idle no More. It is time to not only take it back, it is time to give it back. The International Native American Memorial, built on Sacred Land, built by Native hands, home to the unmarked graves of hundreds of Native men, women, and children, belongs in the rightful owners hands. Let the 800,000 visitors come to the Healing Temple. It is time.
