Medicine Wheels or “Calendar Sites”: Indian Time or the Space/Time Continuum

Abstract

At one time all the so-called “medicine wheels” known and described in the interior of the North American continent were found west of the Mississippi River. A serendipitous event in Wisconsin in 1986 changed this with the discovery of a “medicine wheel” in the rural countryside. After a multi-year investigation and many visits from religious society elders and members of the Native American community, ideas arose as to the true purpose for the construction of the circle of stones in Wisconsin and, for that fact, all the other stone arrangements in North America that appeared to have astronomical alignments as a prominent (and vital) part of the construction. A paradigm shift was under way regarding the Native understanding of function and purpose, one which led to the questioning of cultural biases and the applied doctrine of “presentism.” What was needed was to think “outside the box” of the modern world of the Western mind and its purely technological and scientific view of function only (the “what”) and to embrace the cultural view point of purpose (the “why”) to those whose ancestors were responsible for the placement of these structures. Time, it seems, was on our side.