An enduring story of how Kanza people (Kaw Nation citizens) and other collaborators worked together to bring a grandfather rock home, told through essay, poetry, oral history, and art. For almost a century, the city of Lawrence, Kansas displayed a 28-ton red quartzite boulder as a memorial to the town's founders. However, this boulder, In'zhUje'waxObe (EE(n)) ZHOO-jay wah-HO-bay), had a centuries-long relationship with Kanza people (Kaw Nation citizens). In this powerful collection of imagery, analysis, and reflection, Land is telling the story and the contributors explore narratives of place, how a grandfather rock became a monument, and how Kaw Nation citizens reunited with their relative, facilitating In'zhUje'waxObe shokhIbe (return of he/she/it home, to Kanza people/Land). In ShokhI, scholars, poets, activists, and artists explore the organizing and collaboration that brought In'zhUje'waxObe home to Kaw Nation-owned Allegawaho Memorial Heritage Park in 2024. Indigenous and non-Indigenous contributors chronicle the winding path a group of people took to dismantle a monument, understand intersecting forgotten histories, rematriate a grandfather rock, and confront our ongoing colonial history.
c. huffman is a Kaw Nation Citizen with an MFA and an MDiv who sits at the intersection of privilege, dis/ability and Indigeneity; a place where poetry and theology dance. Her writing has appeared in The Ending Hasn't Happened Yet, a poetry anthology edited by Hannah Soyer. Tai S. Edwards is professor of history and director of the Kansas Studies Institute at Johnson County Community College. She is the author of Osage Women and Empire: Gender and Power and co-editor of Lyda Conley and the Fight to Preserve Huron Indian Cemetery, also published by Kansas. Jay T. Johnson is University Distinguished Professor of Geography at the University of Kansas and director of the Center for Indigenous Research, Science, and Technology. His work has appeared in GeoHumanities, Geographical Research, Nature Sustainability, Sustainability Science, and other publications.
"ShokhI: How In'zhUje'waxObe Returns Home and the Rematriation of a Stolen Monument is both gorgeous and important. This compelling edited collection weaves together geology, history, interview, personal narrative, poetry and other creative arts to chronicle stories of Kaw Nation resilience, of historical violence, and, crucially, of the realities surrounding Indigenous, Black, and settler experiences in Lawrence, Kansas. Lingering on the intersections of memory and human/other-than-human relationship, ShokhI will be of significant interest to scholars, students, and teachers, and, at the same time, is accessible reading for the general public. A must-read, must-teach book"-Lisa Tatonetti, author of Written by the Body: Gender Expansiveness and Indigenous Non-Cis Masculinity "This volume speaks powerfully to the reclaiming of Indigenous ontologies amid a legacy of invisibility and historical revisionism. Through poetry, interviews, history, geology, and personal narrative, In'zhUje'waxObe's rematriation journey brings readers into the lives and experiences of the people who count him as family."-Roberto Herrera, Medgar Evers College CUNY, Assistant Professor of Anthropology "Through multigenre text and art, ShokhI: A Kanza Relative, a Monument, and Rematriation?documents the return home of the Kanza Nation's Grandfather Rock. Oral history is interwoven with photographs, photographs interwoven with poetry, poetry interwoven with visual art. Compelling and comprehensive, ShokhI is a necessary read for all Kansans. Really, in its beautiful testament to the interdependent nature of human and non-(more-than)-human, it is a necessary read for everyone."-Hannah Soyer, author of Dreams in Which I'm Almost Human: A Memoir "Authors, c. huffman, Tai S. Edwards and Jay T. Johnson of In'zhUje'waxObe, move effortlessly between past and present, between intergenerational moments in Kansas history building upon how social discourse illuminates the ruptures between Western scientific and Kanza cultural rationality. The authors tell an Indigenous story of rematriation while simultaneously creating contemporary sacred spaces within the traditional homelands of the Kaw Nation. The Sacred Red Rock Project examines Indigenous ontology and sense-of-place against the backdrop of scientific controversies to bring home In'zhUje'waxObe, a 28-ton grandfather red quartzite boulder stone from Lawrence, KS to the tribal homelands of the Kaw Nation located in Council Grove, KS. By braiding Indigenous knowledge with Eurocentric knowledge, the authors demand that we address the esoteric; the immaterial, non-tangible aspects of reality that challenges a Eurocentric claim to universal truth-contrasted with a more pluralistic view of an Indigenous experience attempting to heal their people, restore their inherent dignity, and apply fundamental human rights to their tribal communities which has been transmitted generation to generation."-Dr. Cornel Pewewardy of In'zhUje'waxObe
