rNews from Indian Country
Pqge 11 Spilyqy Tymoo July Q, 2004
Indians complain about secrecy
surrounding ancient find in Utah
SALT LAKE CITY (AP) -In
a possible repeat of the
Kennewick Man controversy,
some Indian tribes are likely to
assert a connection to the string
of ancient settlements that have
yielded mummified remains in
Utah's remote Book Cliffs re
gion. But establishing a convincing
relationship to the Fremont
people, who vanished without a
trace more than 1,000 years ago,
could be as difficult as the
Kennewick case has shown.
That legal battle involves own
ership of a 9,000-year-old skel
eton found on the Washington
bank of the Columbia River.
The Book Cliffs site in Utah
has been dated as old as 4,500
years and further study could
show it was occupied 7,000 or
more years ago, said Jerry
Spangler, an archaeologist with
the College of Eastern Utah.
That makes it harder to estab
lish a link with modern tribes.
The settlements were kept
secret for more than 50 years
by a rancher who turned it over
for public ownership and retired.
As archaeologists and graduate
students scoured Range Creek
canyon for the past two sum
mers, federal and state agencies
also kept silent.
Last week, some of Utah's
Indian leaders complained it was
Indian ranchers struggle
LODGE POLE, Mont. (AP)
- Ranchers such as Darrell
Doney are struggling with a 51
percent increase in fees charged
to graze livestock on land within
the Fort Belknap Indian Reser-
i vation.
i Doney figures the increase
I will cost him $25,000 this year,
i He fears the rising cost of run-
; ning a ranch could prevent
young people from entering the
i oubiness, anu nun one or ine
l J 1 i C . I . .
few successful industries on the
reservation, where the unem
ployment rate is about 70 per
cent. The increase resulting from
a routine price adjustment by the
Bureau of Indian Affairs gives
Fort Belknap the highest graz
ing fees on any reservation in
Montana or Wyoming, and will
generate more money for own
ers of reservation trust lands,
called "allotments."
But some Indian ranchers say
the increase is based on a flawed
new appraisal formula that al
lows non-Indians to price them
off their own reservation. The
Fort Belknap Indian Commu
nity Council appealed the in
crease, but the BIA ruled the
appeal invalid.
Credit problems!
We finance
most everyone!
kept too quiet.
"I'm not surprised we weren't
consulted or that there's thou
sands of human remains," said
Forrest Cuch, director of Utah's
Division of Indian Affairs and
a Ute Indian, whose modern-day
reservation is the closest of any
tribe's to Range Creek.
Patty Timbimboo-Madsen,
cultural resources manager for
the Northwest Shoshone tribe,
characterized the omission as a
slight against all American Indi
ans. "We know our ancestors are
out there somewhere. When you
find them, out of respect, let the
native people go in and do cer
emonies because you have dis
turbed something that we think
is sacred," she said.
The state and federal govern
ments, and a trust that arranged
the sale, were duty-bound to
report human remains and sa
cred objects on the ancestral
lands of the Northern Utes, said
Melvin Brewster, historic pres
ervation director for the Skull
Valley Band of Goshutes.
"They need to bring in the
traditional spiritual leaders," he
said. "It looks like all this non
compliance went on."
Waldo Wilcox, the rancher
who protected the Range Creek
site, first disclosed the recovery
of mummified remains to The
Associated Press last week. But
The BIA last raised the Fort
Belknap grazing fee in 1998,
increasing it from $7.50 to
$10.57 per animal unit month.
Starting this year, Doney and
other ranchers are seeing the
$10.57 rate jump to $16 per
animal unit month, a measure
ment of the amount of food
necessary to sustain one cow
and calf for a month.
Home to the Assiniboine and
Gros Ventre tribes, the Fort
Belknap Reservation about 45
miles east of Havre spreads
across 650,000 acres.
The largest Indian-owned
cattle herds number fewer than
500 animals. Doney runs about
400 cattle on 8,000 acres. Even
at the old rate of $10.57 per
AUM, he struggled to make
money.
Cattle forage last summer was
unusually poor, and Doney's
calves finished the year an av
erage of 120 pounds under
weight. That amounted to a loss
of about $100 per calf at the
sale barn.
Then the record-breaking
winter of 2003-04 hit. Snow
drifts were impossibly deep.
Doney spent 40 percent more
than usual on hay for his cattle.
when archaeologists conducted
a tour Wednesday, they kept re
porters from viewing burial
mounds or human remains.
State archaeologist Kevin
Jones said that when research
ers stumbled across human re
mains, they were leaving them
in place covered with dirt. Be
cause of secrecy, it's not clear
how many skeletons have been
found or removed from the site.
Cuch said the remains, some
wrapped in beaver skin and ce
dar plank, could be his own an
cestors. From time to time, his
tribe along with the Goshutes
and Pau'ite Indians has claimed
Fremont ancestry.
Still, he concedes, the case
could be hard to prove, just as
Northwest Pacific tribes found
when they asserted ownership
over Kennewick Man, who was
found washed up in 1996 with
a spear point in his hip bone.
The 9th U.S. Circuit Court of
Appeals ruled in February that
the remains of Kennewick Man
don't come under protection of
the Native American Graves
and Repatriation Act, which re
quires tribes to show a kinship
with remains that they wanted
reburied before study. Tribes are
weighing an appeal to the U.S.
Supreme Court.
"The jury's still out on that
question," Cuch said of Ameri
with higher grazing fees
"We spent about $8,000 on
snow removal just to get to the
stranded cattle," he said.
With the new increase in the
summer grazing rates, Doney
said, he is in trouble. "' ' 1
Montana reservations are a
mixture of tribally owned land
and allotments, which are owned
by individual tribal members and
managed by the federal govern
ment. The tribe sets its own graz
ing rates ($8.50 per AUM this
year) on tribal land, while the
BIA sets rates on allotted lands.
Ranchers use both.
To get the new rate, the De
partment of the Interior's Of
fice of the Special Trustee for
American Indians completed an
appraisal in December 2003.
Created in 1994, the Office of
the Special Trustee manages in
come generated from Indian
owned land.
It is the job of the BIA to
act on behalf of the allotment
owners and get the highest rates
possible for their land, said Allan
Hanley, supervisory rangeland
management specialist at the
BIA regional office in Billings.
The goal is to determine fair
market value of lease rates for
the land, Hanley said.
"Appraisals are done based
can tribes' efforts to prove a link
to North America's earliest in
habitants, who hailed from Si
beria and Mongolia more than
10,000 years ago via the Bering
Strait.
The arrival of Europeans
and the Mormon settlement of
Utah erased an oral history that
kept tally of Indian antiquity, he
said.
"A lot of the wisdom keep
ers were killed off and that
knowledge was not transferred
from one generation to another.
Collective knowledge would in
dicate there's a relationship, but
we don't have the cultural con
nection through oral history. On
the other hand, they can't prove
there isn't a connection, either,"
he said. The Fremont refers
more to a period of human his
tory, peaking about 1,000 years
ago, than a particular people,
said David B. Madsen, Utah's
former state archaeologist who
now is a research fellow at The
University of Texas at Austin.
According to his research,
the Fremont were a loose col
lection of highly adaptable
hunter-gatherers and farmers
who may have spoken different
dialects or languages. By 2,000
years ago, they were growing
corn on both sides of Utah's
Wasatch Plateau, but remained
nomadic nearly year-round.
on comparable (lease) sales in
the area," he said. Based on that
formula, the Office of the Spe
cial Trustee said the new rate
' could be' as low as $15 per AUM
' and as high as $16. BIA Super
intendent Cleo Hamilton set the
rate at $16.
Doney noted that if Indian
ranchers go out of business, al
lotment owners who receive the
fees eventually will suffer, as
well.
Ranchers question why the
BIA changed its rate formula to
consider only some of the highest-priced
leases on the market.
Under the old formula, some 61
properties were considered and
Indian ranchers leased 51 of
them. In the newest study, data
was collected from just 18 land
parcels, mostly bid on by non
Indians who paid as much as
$29.82 per AUM. Indians lease
only five of those parcels. The
ranchers say that skews the
numbers.
fib
LtdhaiMMBiaBMi
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Open 7 days a week, on HWY 97
in the old Outpost building, 475-9776
Open 7 a.m. til midnightt seven days a week.
On Hwy. 97 in
Pole carved by criminal
going to Seattle museum
MUKILTEO, Wash. (AP)
- A handmade Salish totem
pole, rejected by the Port of
Olympia because of an up
roar over the chief carver's
criminal record, has been pur
chased for a museum in Se
attle. Charles Pancerzewski, a
retired accountant and Pacific
Northwest coast Indian art
collector who lives in this sub
urb north of Seattle, paid
$30,352 for the intricately
carved 36-foot welcome pole
in a sealed-bid auction last
month. The Burke Museum
of Natural History and Cul
ture at the University of
till l
Warm Springs celebrated
through town, followed by
the community center, and
'OWUj, &
Friday Night
$2.00 off Prime Rib Special
SW Hwy. 97 475-3262
Cold
Beverages,
Ice, Soda,
Groceries
& more
mm
- -- -, 1
the old Outpost building,
Washington received the do
nated pole June 28 and
placed it in a warehouse for
storage until it can be erected
with four other totem poles,
officials said.
"The pole is a great pole,"
Pancerzewski said. "Ex
tremely well done."
Designed by David Pasco
and Duane Franklin, the pole
was completed four years ago
by Douglas Tobin of the
Squaxin Island tribe and
other carvers on a $66,000
contract from the port, which
planned to make it the cen
terpiece in a welcome plaza.
Dava McMechanSpilyay
July Fourth with a parade
a barbeque, kids games at
then a fireworks display.
475-9776.