If you enter Sertoma park by the amusement park entrance, then take the one-way portion of the park road past the Dakota Zoo, you’ll see this new display near the park exit. It’s a medicine wheel with the traditional Native American colors of red, white, yellow and black. Different tribes ascribe different meaning to the four colors. Some nations use them to denote the four directions, other four elements, and others the four facets of health (spiritual, emotional, physical and intellectual).

There are four eagle sculptures positioned radially outside the medicine wheel. They’re pretty neat sculptures, not monstrosities like the big whatchamacallit up near the riverboat dock. The center of the circle has a tile mosaic on it. There are benches in the area for recreation and the whole display adds to the flavor of the riverside experience.

For those of you who have left Bismarck-Mandan and check this blog to see what’s going on in your old home town, the riverside areas have been transformed, mostly in anticipation of tourism due to the Lewis and Clark bicentennial. The walking paths have been expanded and repaved, there are cultural displays such as this one, a lot of signage has been added, and there are other little attractions too. In the future I plan to write some posts highlighting the changes around here…there have been many in just the past year or two.