Iowa’s only national monument part of special celebration

The home of Iowa’s only national monument is holding a special celebration of Native American life and history today. Bob Palmer is a park ranger at the Effigy Mounds National Monument in far northeast Iowa’s Allamakee County, near Marquette. He says today’s highlights include a symposium called “Sacred Sites; Can They Be Shared?”Speakers are coming from as far away as the U-S-S Arizona in Hawaii, the Oklahoma City Memorial, and on various Native American sites in Minnesota and in the Little Big Horn site in the Dakotas. Palmer says the weekend is dedicated to learning about and exploring the remnants of Native American arts and culture.Activities and demonstrations include: dancing, carving, pottery, finger-weaving and making American Indian food. For people who haven’t been to the park before, as the name implies, it’s a collection of unusual mounds of earth that have endured centuries. The oldest of the mounds are 25-hundred years old. There are 31 of them, shaped like bison, eagles and bear spread across 25-hundred acres and 15 miles of hiking trails, all along the scenic bluffs of far northeast Iowa. For more information, call (563) 873-3491 or surf to “www.nps.gov/efmo” for the National Park Service at Effigy Mounds.