The Kaw people are choosing a site for a sacred bolder returned to the tribe

James Pepper Henry, vice chairman of the Kaw Nation. He's standing in a quasi-traditional Kaw dugout in the Flint Hills on their property. (Frank Morri/ KCUR)

LAWRENCE, Kansas — The huge red bolder standing bolt upright in a downtown park doesn't belong here.

And after almost a century, the Kaw tribe is reclaiming the rock that, for generation after generation, its people held as a sacred altar.