When the powerful Tropical Storm Irene swept through, the storm unearthed a mystery in Branford.
Part of Linden Avenue collapsed from the storm and neighbors of a beach there found what they believed were human bones protruding from the embankment that the storm eroded and called Branford police. Those bones, experts have determined, likely came from an ancient Native American burial site.
Police responded to the eroded area on Aug. 29 and brought the bones to the Connecticut State Medical Examiner’s Office, who determined the bones were human, and possibly of Native American origin.
"They were femurs, some rib bones, parts of the pelvis," said Running Fox, a member of the Quinnipiac Tribal Council. He said the unearthed bones were remains of two members of the Totoket Quinnipiac Tribe.
Over the years, ancient arrowheads and stone tools have been found in Branford.
Over the last few weeks, Branford Police and the town’s engineer, Janice Plaziak, have worked closely with archaeologists and members of the Native American Heritage Advisory Council to maintain the integrity and security of the site until a proper method of returning the area back to its pre-storm condition could be determined.
“Our major concern during these preceding weeks was to maintain the honor and respect of those Native Americans who may have been laid to rest in this area and work closely with their ancestors to maintain the dignity they deserve,” Police Chief Kevin Halloran said.
A special burial ceremony was held Thursday to return the remains to their rightful place.
"It gives us an opportunity to thank the creator and ask him to watch over them so they will never be disturbed again," Fox said.
http://diaconspiracyfiles.com/2009/05/16/dia-and-ancient-indian-burial-grounds/
Is DIA built on top of ancient Native American graves?
Such rumors are certainly part of the airport’s folklore among DIA employees and frequent travelers. This is usually in reference to the pedestrian bridge arching between the main Jeppesen Terminal building and Concourse A. It is on these moving walkways that visitors will hear the sounds of Native American chants being played from speakers in a continuous loop. Officially the recordings are part of the extensive DIA art program and have been playing non-stop, 24-hours a day since the airport’s opening 14-years-ago.
As the story goes, the airport was constructed on top of burial grounds and spiritual sites used for centuries by the native tribes that populated the Front Range before the coming of the White Man. The perpetual playing of Native American songs in the 365-foot-long bridge was originally initiated by officials as a way to placate any angry spirits who might want to pull a Poltergeist or The Shining on one of the nation’s busiest airports. People in the conspiracy theory world think the burial ground may have connections to the Navajo writing in the floors at DIA and the dead Native American women seen in the Tanguma murals.
When asked, DIA spokespeople laugh-off the notion that the music has anything to do with angry spirits or that the land where the airport sits was a burial site for ancient tribes. Noting that little archeological evidence of Indian burial sites has ever been found around DIA, they surmise that the rumor had its origin in a ceremony that was performed around the time of DIA’s groundbreaking in the late-80′s by various Native American shaman to bless the new facility. Anything else is pure conjecture, they assert.
What they don’t mention is the secret ceremony conducted on the grounds of the airport in 1995.
That April, coalition of Native American spiritual leaders from around the country performed a night-time ceremony at several sites around the airport to put ancient spirits to rest that were disturbed by the construction of the multi-billion dollar airport. They were part of an official city group under the Webb administration called the “DIA Spiritual Resolution Committee.”
Members included representatives of the Cheyenne and Arapaho tribes who said they had discovered several sites where the spirits had been disturbed, said an article in the Rocky Mountain News. The city and the airport even paid for leaders of the Montana Cheyenne to come to Denver calm the Indian ghosts. At the time, one of the group’s members told another reporter that “Whenever [spirits] are disturbed, it seems like bad things come about.”
Better keep that music playing.
http://www.westword.com/1995-05-31/news/political-seance/
http://diaconspiracyfiles.com/2009/05/16/dia-and-ancient-indian-burial-grounds/
DIA and ancient Indian burial grounds
DIA's huge pedestrian bridge.
Such rumors are certainly part of the airport’s folklore among DIA employees and frequent travelers. This is usually in reference to the pedestrian bridge arching between the main Jeppesen Terminal building and Concourse A. It is on these moving walkways that visitors will hear the sounds of Native American chants being played from speakers in a continuous loop. Officially the recordings are part of the extensive DIA art program and have been playing non-stop, 24-hours a day since the airport’s opening 14-years-ago.
As the story goes, the airport was constructed on top of burial grounds and spiritual sites used for centuries by the native tribes that populated the Front Range before the coming of the White Man. The perpetual playing of Native American songs in the 365-foot-long bridge was originally initiated by officials as a way to placate any angry spirits who might want to pull a Poltergeist or The Shining on one of the nation’s busiest airports. People in the conspiracy theory world think the burial ground may have connections to the Navajo writing in the floors at DIA and the dead Native American women seen in the Tanguma murals.
When asked, DIA spokespeople laugh-off the notion that the music has anything to do with angry spirits or that the land where the airport sits was a burial site for ancient tribes. Noting that little archeological evidence of Indian burial sites has ever been found around DIA, they surmise that the rumor had its origin in a ceremony that was performed around the time of DIA’s groundbreaking in the late-80′s by various Native American shaman to bless the new facility. Anything else is pure conjecture, they assert.
What they don’t mention is the secret ceremony conducted on the grounds of the airport in 1995.
That April, coalition of Native American spiritual leaders from around the country performed a night-time ceremony at several sites around the airport to put ancient spirits to rest that were disturbed by the construction of the multi-billion dollar airport. They were part of an official city group under the Webb administration called the “DIA Spiritual Resolution Committee.”
Members included representatives of the Cheyenne and Arapaho tribes who said they had discovered several sites where the spirits had been disturbed, said an article in the Rocky Mountain News. The city and the airport even paid for leaders of the Montana Cheyenne to come to Denver calm the Indian ghosts. At the time, one of the group’s members told another reporter that “Whenever [spirits] are disturbed, it seems like bad things come about.”
Better keep that music playing.
http://www.westword.com/1995-05-31/news/political-seance/
POLITICAL SEANCE
A CITY AGENCY CALMS INDIAN SPIRITS AT DIA, BUYS T-SHIRTS FOR SENIORS AND BONES UP ON ITS FRENCH--ALL IN THE NAME OF "COMMUNITY RELATIONS."
It cost Denver taxpayers $700 to have Lance Allrunner arrange a secret ghost-busting ceremony at Denver International Airport last month. But the way Allrunner sees it, it was money well spent.
Allrunner, a 26-year-old Denver resident, traveled by car to the Cheyenne Indian reservations in Oklahoma and Montana earlier this year as an emissary of Denver mayor Wellington Webb. His mission: to confer with leaders of the tribe about ancient spirits allegedly agitated during the construction of DIA.
Rumors that the new airport was built atop a Native American burial ground have circulated for years, though copious archaeological research has never found any evidence to support them. What's more, a group of Indians already blessed the airport in a religious ceremony eight years before. But Allrunner, a volunteer member of the city's "DIA Spiritual Resolution Committee," says it was best not to take any chances. Allrunner, who is part Cheyenne, succeeded in convincing representatives of the Montana Cheyenne to come to DIA and calm the Indian ghosts in a nighttime ritual conducted on Easter weekend.
"Whenever [spirits] are disturbed, it seems like bad things come about," Allrunner says. "I was thinking about the safety of people."
Reimbursement for Allrunner's travel costs, records show, came from the Agency for Human Rights and Community Relations, an obscure branch of city government that has engendered more than its share of controversy in the past year.
The stated mission of HRCR is to make sure City Hall has a human face--and, in the words of its director, to take care of "the most vulnerable of Denver's citizens." But critics of the agency, including former employees, say that under the current administration, HRCR has been plagued by mismanagement, political cronyism and spending that has ranged from the wasteful to the simply bizarre.
"The whole agency stinks," says Michelle Mobley, a former Volunteers in Service to America (VISTA) worker assigned to HRCR last summer.
Last year Webb transferred responsibility for the federally funded "Weed & Seed" anti-crime program from HRCR to another city department after residents charged that the initiative was being mismanaged. But complaints about the program have persisted. Just last week, former HRCR employee Sue Weinstein went public with allegations that her colleagues at Weed & Seed had been hired on the basis of their ties to Webb and were more concerned with serving the mayor than with fighting crime in city neighborhoods.
In March, KMGH-TV/Channel 7 revealed that a block captain in HRCR's Neighborhood Watch program had been indicted by a federal grand jury for drug trafficking. Around the same time, Westword reported that an HRCR anti-crime coordinator active in the Webb campaign had been arrested three times in the past twelve years.
Larry Borom, the former head of the Denver Urban League whom Webb appointed to head HRCR in 1993, says the agency does a good job overall. "We serve as a liaison between the city and the citizens," Borom says. "That's what makes the city a human place--a place that cares about its citizens."
And some Denver residents say they are truly thankful for HRCR. Highland neighborhood resident Russ Tarver, for instance, says the agency helped him get a handicapped parking space in front of his home after he suffered a stroke a few years ago.
But even Tarver, who sits on the board of his neighborhood association, voices frustration with the agency. When he went back to HRCR last year to get Neighborhood Watch materials translated into Spanish for Highland's Hispanic residents, he says, staffers were rude and uncooperative. "They didn't want to help," Tarver says. "They didn't want to do anything."
Webb's political opponents, including supporters of Mary DeGroot, Webb's challenger in the mayoral election, go even further, charging that the agency has been used as a taxpayer-funded auxiliary of the Webb campaign. HRCR is "real good at promoting supporters of Mayor Webb, in my opinion," says city councilman Ted Hackworth, a longtime Webb foe. "That's its main purpose."
Founded in 1948, HRCR has grown into an umbrella agency whose official goals couldn't be loftier. The current city ordinance authorizing HRCR says its purpose is to provide "an equal opportunity for citizens of Denver to participate fully in the economic, cultural and intellectual life of the city."
The agency attempts to do that by supervising nine different offices and commissions, each with separate responsibilities. There's the Commission on Youth, which oversees programs for city teenagers and runs the Neighborhood Watch anti-crime program. There's the Public Safety Review Commission, which hears citizen complaints of police brutality. There's the Office of Citizen Response, intended to serve as a general governmental troubleshooter for Denver residents and help them negotiate the bureaucratic maze of City Hall.
Borom says HRCR offices like the Denver Women's Commission are important, even in an era when voters are railing against government waste and public spending is being cut to the bone. "For the cost that you pay, you get a very high-quality product--a distilled sense of where the problems are" for women in the city, Borom says. "It's a really important function to empower the women in the community. And no one else does that."
Allrunner, a 26-year-old Denver resident, traveled by car to the Cheyenne Indian reservations in Oklahoma and Montana earlier this year as an emissary of Denver mayor Wellington Webb. His mission: to confer with leaders of the tribe about ancient spirits allegedly agitated during the construction of DIA.
Rumors that the new airport was built atop a Native American burial ground have circulated for years, though copious archaeological research has never found any evidence to support them. What's more, a group of Indians already blessed the airport in a religious ceremony eight years before. But Allrunner, a volunteer member of the city's "DIA Spiritual Resolution Committee," says it was best not to take any chances. Allrunner, who is part Cheyenne, succeeded in convincing representatives of the Montana Cheyenne to come to DIA and calm the Indian ghosts in a nighttime ritual conducted on Easter weekend.
"Whenever [spirits] are disturbed, it seems like bad things come about," Allrunner says. "I was thinking about the safety of people."
Reimbursement for Allrunner's travel costs, records show, came from the Agency for Human Rights and Community Relations, an obscure branch of city government that has engendered more than its share of controversy in the past year.
The stated mission of HRCR is to make sure City Hall has a human face--and, in the words of its director, to take care of "the most vulnerable of Denver's citizens." But critics of the agency, including former employees, say that under the current administration, HRCR has been plagued by mismanagement, political cronyism and spending that has ranged from the wasteful to the simply bizarre.
"The whole agency stinks," says Michelle Mobley, a former Volunteers in Service to America (VISTA) worker assigned to HRCR last summer.
Last year Webb transferred responsibility for the federally funded "Weed & Seed" anti-crime program from HRCR to another city department after residents charged that the initiative was being mismanaged. But complaints about the program have persisted. Just last week, former HRCR employee Sue Weinstein went public with allegations that her colleagues at Weed & Seed had been hired on the basis of their ties to Webb and were more concerned with serving the mayor than with fighting crime in city neighborhoods.
In March, KMGH-TV/Channel 7 revealed that a block captain in HRCR's Neighborhood Watch program had been indicted by a federal grand jury for drug trafficking. Around the same time, Westword reported that an HRCR anti-crime coordinator active in the Webb campaign had been arrested three times in the past twelve years.
Larry Borom, the former head of the Denver Urban League whom Webb appointed to head HRCR in 1993, says the agency does a good job overall. "We serve as a liaison between the city and the citizens," Borom says. "That's what makes the city a human place--a place that cares about its citizens."
And some Denver residents say they are truly thankful for HRCR. Highland neighborhood resident Russ Tarver, for instance, says the agency helped him get a handicapped parking space in front of his home after he suffered a stroke a few years ago.
But even Tarver, who sits on the board of his neighborhood association, voices frustration with the agency. When he went back to HRCR last year to get Neighborhood Watch materials translated into Spanish for Highland's Hispanic residents, he says, staffers were rude and uncooperative. "They didn't want to help," Tarver says. "They didn't want to do anything."
Webb's political opponents, including supporters of Mary DeGroot, Webb's challenger in the mayoral election, go even further, charging that the agency has been used as a taxpayer-funded auxiliary of the Webb campaign. HRCR is "real good at promoting supporters of Mayor Webb, in my opinion," says city councilman Ted Hackworth, a longtime Webb foe. "That's its main purpose."
Founded in 1948, HRCR has grown into an umbrella agency whose official goals couldn't be loftier. The current city ordinance authorizing HRCR says its purpose is to provide "an equal opportunity for citizens of Denver to participate fully in the economic, cultural and intellectual life of the city."
The agency attempts to do that by supervising nine different offices and commissions, each with separate responsibilities. There's the Commission on Youth, which oversees programs for city teenagers and runs the Neighborhood Watch anti-crime program. There's the Public Safety Review Commission, which hears citizen complaints of police brutality. There's the Office of Citizen Response, intended to serve as a general governmental troubleshooter for Denver residents and help them negotiate the bureaucratic maze of City Hall.
Borom says HRCR offices like the Denver Women's Commission are important, even in an era when voters are railing against government waste and public spending is being cut to the bone. "For the cost that you pay, you get a very high-quality product--a distilled sense of where the problems are" for women in the city, Borom says. "It's a really important function to empower the women in the community. And no one else does that."
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