The Kaw will reunite with a sacred rock that Lawrence used as a monument to white people

The more than 20-ton quartzite boulder was a place for ceremonies and song. 'It was like our church. Our church was taken away from us,' a Kaw leader says.
LAWRENCE, Kansas — James Pepper Henry was in his 20s the first time he saw the massive quartzite boulder in downtown Lawrence.

The sheer size of the 20-plus-ton red rock sacred to the Kaw people surprised him. Its significance overwhelmed him.

“The hairs kind of stood up on my arms,” Pepper Henry said. Thirty years later he’s vice chairman of the Kaw Nation and CEO of the First Americans Museum in Oklahoma City. “This was something that needed to come back to our people.”

Pepper Henry had grown up hearing stories about the boulder, called Íⁿ'zhúje'waxóbe in the Kanza language, and about his people’s ceremonies and songs related to it.

“We belong to it and we have an obligation to care for it,” he said. “It’s really an altar for us. … It was like our church. Our church was taken away from us.”