Defend the mounds: the people fought for them, and still do

SUMMARYDefend the mounds: the people fought for them, and still do (Nov 3, 2026).
1729, THE NATCHEZ RISE FOR THEIR TEMPLE (Record): in spring 1729 the French commandant Chépart demanded the center of White Apple village for his plantation. The site held a temple containing the Natchez ancestors' graves; he threatened to burn it and planted a missionary cross there. On Nov 28, 1729 the Natchez rose up, destroyed Fort Rosalie and killed Chépart. The Natchez were a mound-building people (the Grand Village of the Natchez has platform mounds), ruled by the "Great Sun."
THE AYITI LINK (Record): in January 1731 the French captured the Great Sun, the Little Sun and about 450 women and children, and Governor Perier shipped them to Saint-Domingue (Ayiti) and sold them as slaves. Mound people of the Mississippi were enslaved in Ayiti, a direct receipt for P159 ("the enslaved of Ayiti were of the land"). Survivors went to the Chickasaw, Creek and Cherokee; the Natchez remain a constituent tribe of the Muscogee (Creek) Nation.
1971–1990, MARIA PEARSON (Yankton Dakota) (Record): when Iowa road builders dug up 26 white pioneers and a Native woman and her baby, the whites were reburied and the Native remains were sent to the state archaeologist. Pearson sat outside Governor Robert Ray's office in traditional dress until he met her: "You can give me back my people's bones and you can quit digging them up." Result: the Iowa Burials Protection Act (1976), the first U.S. law protecting Native remains, and she was a catalyst for NAGPRA (1990).
2008, NANIH WAIYA, "THE MOTHER MOUND" (Record): the Choctaw origin mound in Mississippi was returned to the Mississippi Band of Choctaw Indians by the state in 2008.
2023–2025, OCTAGON EARTHWORKS, Ohio (Record): a 2,000-year-old Hopewell earthwork leased as a country-club golf course for over a century. The Ohio Supreme Court (2023) let the state historical society reclaim it; the Hopewell Ceremonial Earthworks became a UNESCO World Heritage Site in Sept 2023; it opened to the public on Jan 1, 2025

PATTERNfrom 1729 to now, the people have fought for the mounds and the ancestors inside them: with war (Natchez), with protest (Pearson), and with law (NAGPRA, Nanih Waiya, Octagon)

LENS"Defend the mounds" is a 300-year-old fight, and the Natchez paid for it with enslavement in Ayiti (Record + Pattern). WW9 line candidate: "DEFEND THE MOUNDS."