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Despite the successful August petition drive by the Friends of
Wissatinnewag to protect the 10 acre wetland where Native American human
remains were dumped and bulldozed as "fill" in 1964, the Greenfield Town
Council voted on September 15 to refuse to rescind their commercial
rezoning of the area and instead forced a costly special election on
Tuesday, November 16th.
PRESS RELEASE
September 22, 2004, Greenfield, MA: The Greenfield Town Council has
rejected Native American pleas to remove 10 acres of wetlands from the
new French King Highway commercial zoning strip. The non-profit Native
American historic preservation organization, Friends of Wissatinnewag,
asserts that those 10 acres contain Native burials.
After the success of their August petition drive to protect 10 acres
of wetland along French King Highway where Native American human remains
were dumped and bulldozed as "fill" in 1964, the Friends of
Wissatinnewag took their petition before the Greenfield Town Council to
ask them to rescind their July, 2004 vote which rezoned the 10 acres as
commercial.
While rescinding the rezoning vote would have allowed the Council to
remove the 10 acres from the threat of imminent commercial development,
and then to revote to keep the remaining 35 acres commercially zoned
without costing the town any money , the unabashedly pro-development
Council majority instead refused, and moved to force a costly special
election on the rezoning question to be held November 16th. The Council
first attempted to force the special election to an earlier date at the
end of October, which Friends president Monique Fordham said was an
obvious attempt to deny the Friends sufficient time to mount a
successful public education campaign before the vote.
Due to the possible legal problems presented by forcing through a
special election a week before the November 2nd national election, the
Council's plans were stymied and the new November 16th date was
announced this week. Fordham said the decision to force a hasty and
costly special election when the issue could have been resolved without
one demonstrates the Council's willingness to put mean-spiritedness
ahead of fiscal responsibility.
After the meeting where the Council refused to rescind their
commercial rezoning vote, Friends president Fordham expressed the
organization's frustration with the Council's lack of concern for the
protection of the Native burials that had been dumped into the 10 acre
wetland in 1964. "The Town Council can barely restrain its contempt for
Native Americans and their allies," said Fordham. "They are willing to
waste the taxpayers' money just so they can say the Indians didn't win.
They have all the influence with the local media, and we've become their
favorite whipping boy. This is nasty, good-old-boy politics at its worst."
Fordham said that in the eight months since the commercial
development was first put forward by the pro-big-box group Citizens For
Growth, the Friends' efforts to protect the 10 acres have been either
ignored or attacked.
Fordham pointed out that Greenfield Mayor Christine Forgey and the
Council had never responded to the multiple letters which the Friends
had sent them since March, which provided them with information about
the burial issue and asked them to work together with the organization
to find a cooperative resolution to the issue of the fate of the 10 acres.
"Neither did they ever respond to our public offers, made at town
meetings, to work to raise money to protect the 10 acres," said Fordham.
"We took every possible opportunity to try to work with them, and we
were completely ignored, time and time again," she said. "It appears
they are determined to see the already desecrated graves of our Native
ancestors paved over at any cost."
Likewise, the spokeswoman for the pro-big-box Citizens For Growth,
the group who first put forth the commercial rezoning proposal, had to
admit publicly to posting messages on her website instructing readers to
sabotage the Friends' August petition drive by putting down "bogus"
names and addresses, once the Friends called her postings to the
attention of the public. Such fraud is a crime under Massachusetts law.
Despite the Friends' calls to have the woman removed from her position
on the town's Human Rights Commission, the Mayor refused.
"Is it any wonder that the Friends of Wissatinnewag now question
whether they are dealing with people who operate in good faith?" asked
Fordham.
In 2001, the non-profit Friends purchased and protected the ancient
Indian village and burial ground known as Wissatinnewag, which is listed
on the National Register of Historic Places. Fordham says sand and
gravel excavation on the Wissatinnewag site in 1964 hit numerous
burials, which were dumped and bulldozed into the nearby 10 acre White
Ash Swamp. In July of this year, the Greenfield Town Council rezoned
this wetland as part of a new 45 acre commercial area on French King
Highway, designed to pave the way for a big box superstore.
"Now, with public attention focusing on this issue, the
pro-development Councilors and the Mayor are claiming the 10 acres of
partially filled wetland are undevelopable, but they can't explain why
they included them in the new commercial district if they truly can't be
developed," said Fordham. "Rather, our research shows that the 10 acres
are not safe, and the act of removing them from the commercial zoning
would at least protect them from the imminent threat of the big box
store the Council and Mayor are so aggressively pushing for."
A ballot question committee has been formed in preparation of the
November 16th vote. The committee has formed under the name Citizens for
Native American Grave Protection.
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