Transcript for Vernell Wabasha Video

[ Bee buzzing ] [ Birds chirping ]

I’m Vernell Wabasha and I’m a Yankton Sioux or Ihanktonwan as they say and I just think that my first experience coming out here to the petroglyphs was many, many years ago and the feeling at first was, I couldn’t really figure out why they had these big rocks out here in this prairie and what would attract people to come off the main freeway to come out and look in this big, big empty field. I thought it was an empty field.

My feeling was and I think with other people coming out here, you will find a strange kind of a complex feeling of what’s going on out here and why the interest? But when you look and see the rocks and the story that… Like this big rock is trying to tell us something and what?

We’re going to have to find out and interpret what the symbols mean. To me it felt like a… Well it’s like the sign language.

It was probably something our ancestors left to tell a story of what was going on around here at the time they were here, while they were camping in this area. But the further and more you walk into the little knolls around here you will find that there is a presence here. And I do feel that it is different feeling that you would feel when you know there’s something special out here. It’s like walking into a church and the cathedral you have this awe, awesome feeling about there’s something here.

There’s something here that’s going to… You’re going to take home with you that you’re going to keep feeling. In the back of your mind you put in the back of your mind and you’re still going to wonder what, what and why our people left this behind for us to… I’m hoping that my great-grandchildren will be able to be here to experience these feelings that you have when you come out here.

It’s so beautiful and it’s so special I think, to hear the wind blowing. You feel it and you can hear it and it’s just like there’s somebody here talking to you.

[ Bee buzzing ] [ Birds chirping ]