[Above: Two–some say three–hundred-year-old oak trees in an Indigenous burial area on Madison’s North Side near where California-based developers are proposing “affordable” housing as part of the city’s Oscar Mayer Special Area Plan]
*****
In recent years, City of Madison leaders have made much ballyhoo about recognizing that the city stands on the Ho-Chunk Nation’s ancestral land.
This is good, and long overdue.
But meanwhile, city leaders and developers are planning “affordable” housing and commercial developments over known Indigenous burial areas on the former Oscar Mayer and Hartmeyer sites on Madison’s North Side, with little (or no) recognition that they are there–and refusing to have them professionally surveyed and properly protected.
The Oscar Mayer and Hartmeyer properties are also extremely contaminated and the city and DNR are not demanding that they be thoroughly investigated, forget about cleaned up, before allowing developers to build “affordable” housing there.
As we wrote back in June, the city is creating glaring environmental injustices right before our eyes.
Actions speak louder than words.
*****
Below map from this document.
