LONGEST WALK IN PItts burgh

Yesterday June 14 the participants of the LONGEST WALK II joined with local Native people and members of the Council Of Three Rivers American Indan Center to progress through the streets of the city of Pittsburgh.

The Walk first arrived in the westrn Pennsylvania area on Wedneasday June 11 and was welcomed at the border by special representative of Governor Ed Rendell, Lance Simmens. Later that day they proceeded up Route 22 East to Route 18 where they prayed and retired to Raccoon Creek State park to camp.

On Friday June 13 the walkers advanced on Route 22 from Route 18 and then on Route 60 to the community of Ingram.
Then yesterday on JUne 14 we continued on toward Pittsburgh.

We started at the outskirts of the city in Ingram and entered the Port Authority Transit busway escorted by bus company authorities and bus company police escort. We emerged at the Carson Street station and entered the route 51 corridor where city of Pittsburgh police replaced the PATransit police and escorted us to and over the West End bridge into the city's North Side. We crossed from the North Side to POINT STATE PARK in the heart of Downtown Pittsburgh where the Allegheny Rivers flows down from Seneca land in the North and the Monongahela River flows north from Virginia to join and form the Ohio River that then flows westward toward the Mississippi.

Prayers were offered and sacred songs were raised at this holy spot where the three visible rivers are joined by yet a fourth invisible one which flows underground and emerges right there at that place in the form of a beautiful fountain that graces the park.

The staff carriers stood in front of the great fountain as each walker made a special offering of tobacco into the waters of the rivers. Several participants, including myself offered prayers and other words there. I prayed silently in behalf of several of my Taino brothers and sisters who are presently in need of healing. I offered audible spoken prayer in behalf of all of the leaders and people of my Taino Nation.

I made a special offering of sacred cassabe in the river waters for all of these people.

Later, as official local liason of the Walk I presented Jimbo, the co-ordinator for the Northern contingent with a proclamation from city of Pittsburgh Mayor Luke Ravenstahl which I read out loud for the assembled group.

We spent the rest of the morning and most of the afternoon walking the length of the city. We walked the streets of Bloomfield where we stopped for lunch, and eventually reached the neighborhood of East Liberty where we convened at the East Liberty Presbyterian Church and concluded the walk for the day.

The Walk will resume in East Liberty on Monday when the leaders intend to take the walkers on Penn Avenue all the way to the other end of the city at the border with the community of Wilkinsburg.

On June 17 the walkers will be transported in cars and in a bus provided by the Council of Three Rivers American Indian Center to the Meadowcroft Rock shelter archeological site http://www.mnsu.edu/emuseum/archaeology/sites/northamerica/meadowcroft.html

The Walk was a powerful and educational experience, not only for the regular walkers that started back in California and other points west, but also for the local participants such as Johnny Creed Coe, local member of the Council of Three Rivers Indian Center and his sons, many of them sundancers and Pow Wow dancers, and for Areya Simmons, daughter of local Indigenous activist and member of the Sierra Club Stephany Simmons. It was through the efforts of Stephany that we secured support of the local Sierra Club here in Pittsburgh.

It was also educational for the hundreds of Pittsburghers who got an opportunity to experience this unique manifestation of sacredness and commitment on the part of America's original inhabitants.

I want to thank Ron Kruscinski of the Pennsylvania Department of Transportation for helping us organize today's itinerary so that everything went with hardly a hitch. I also want to thank Lance Simmens the Governor's Representative in the state capital for his invaluable help in expediting our acquisition of an activity permit from the city, and Lieutenant Dave Heckman of the Pennsylvania state police for all of the co-operation that he has provided to us in managing the passage through the several townships west of Pittsburgh all the way to Ingram. My thanks also goes to Commander Schubert of the Pittsburgh Police Dept who pulled officers from other duties to provide aspecial police escort for our walkers on all of the steets of the city. I want to thank Chuck Rompalla of Port Authority Transit who actually walked ever step of our trek on the busway right beside the walkers and who was instrumental in providing us safe transit and escort on the special bus routes of the city. These officials have proved extremely flexible and adaptive to the many changes and transitions that this plan has undergone so that the Walk did not experience the intransigence and rigidty that it suffered in at least one other city previous to ours here.

Please check out videos of yesterday's walk through the city of Pittsburgh at our video site

Taino Spirituality: http://tainospirituality.magnify.net/



Miguel sobaoko Koromo Sague