The grounds of UWSP: Honoring of the dead
By Kris Leonhardt
Continued from previous week
STEVENS POINT – UWSP Emeritus Professor of Archaeology Ray P. Reser informed the UW-Stevens Point administration of the burial grounds in 2017, shortly before the site near “Old Main” was declared an uncatalogued burial site by the state.
But the grounds still have no public acknowledgement or memorial to the site’s existence. Work recently began on a campus monument, but his has been further hampered by the appearance of COVID-19.
“It’s a scarily similar situation,” Reser said,” in that here we have a pandemic. Back then we had epidemic in terms of the Scarlet Fever coming through the area. Essentially, we have a mass burial within the city limits of Stevens Point that really has gone unrecognized.”
“While I was working for DCA (Diversity & College Access) starting in September of 2019, I started planning for the installation of an indigenous peoples heritage monument on campus,” said Josh Norman, former UWSP DCA Social Justice Coordinator. “There were some barriers in the way, like we needed a place to put it, and we needed funding for it and a lot of collaborative efforts.
“So, for the last few months of 2019, DCA and I worked with a bunch of different organizations like the two Native American organizations on campus, to get their input; Schmeeckle Reserve staff; Office of Sustainability; some folks in the Interior Architecture department – just trying to pull some strings together.
“And then, it was in January when Ray (Reser) alerted me about the burial grounds, so that completely changed our project. So, from January on, we started trying to have a focus of tying the burial grounds into this heritage monument; but ever since COVID-19, it’s kind of been put on the back burner.”
Norman’s attempts to form some type of recognition for the site were placed on hold as he returned home to Minnesota to finish classes online. His part in any form of project will no longer be realized, as he graduates this month. Any work in moving forward will be left to the determination of his successor, as he leaves his position at UWSP.
“I just learned about the burial grounds (in January), and I have been trying to coordinate with the Native Americans on campus, and with Karen Ann Hoffman and Ray (Reser), but there are a lot of administrative roadblocks to this… I really was disappointed that I couldn’t put more forward,” Norman said. “I hope that something good will come from this.”
“It’s a bit of a dark history, but it doesn’t mean that UWSP cannot acknowledge what happened,” Reser said. “Obviously, it happened long before any of us were on the planet, so we can do the right thing and move ahead from here.”