Opinion: Laws fail to protect sacred sites from desecration

In Indian Country, ancient village sites, treaty-protected fishing sites, sacred landmarks, and tribal burial grounds are routinely damaged or demolished by private and public developers. The desecration has resulted from a wide array of projects, ranging from energy development to highway expansion. Too often, the commercial proponents and governmental permitting agencies show open disdain for the voice of tribal governments seeking to protect their few remaining cultural monuments. If they don’t overtly ignore legal protections afforded to tribal cultural resources, they more often than not do the bare minimum required under federal and state law, which, in the end, is not much at all.

Take the wanton acts of the City of Oak Harbor, Washington. Determined to complete a road project through a known Indian archaeological site, the city bulldozed tribal burial grounds and unearthed human remains, treating ancestors in the same manner as one would treat garbage. Some ancestral remains were found in piles marked “free dirt,” open for the taking. The Washington State Department of Archaeology and Historic Preservation “warned the city about the likelihood of cultural remains and recommended that the city hire an archeologist and create a plan to deal with inadvertent discoveries of cultural materials.” The city committed to follow the state’s recommendations, but in the end broke its promises and destroyed an ancient tribal burial ground. Now it faces a class-action lawsuit.

Likewise, California’s state transportation agency is now looking to “make amends” with the Sherwood Band of Pomo Indians after a sacred site was “not just destroyed [but] eviscerated” during excavation for a highway bypass project near the town of Willits. Caltrans reportedly knew the site was located in the project area “but — due to a typographical error, poor geographical descriptions or mapping problems — believed it was located ‘well away’ from the actual construction site.” No matter what truly happened in Oak Harbor, Washington and Willits, California, the permanent harms have been inflicted, and they cannot be adequately mitigated, regardless of monetary damages awarded or any ordered repatriation plan.