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The Death of a Mound

Politics and Human Remains in Minnesota

Part 10

 -December 21, 2005-

Why?

Bruce White

 

Details have been available since August about the remains of more than 55 Native people found at the site of Lincoln Mounds 1 and 2 in Bloomington, Minnesota, several blocks from the Mall of America. The facts were far worse than any of the rumors reported during the last year. The rough draft of a report on the excavation by Summit Envirosolutions—the firm hired by the developer, McGough Construction, to do the archaeological work—dates the burials to 2000 years ago and describes the way the remains were arranged and how they were removed to another site. But some basic questions remain: How could this have happened? Why did the agency responsible for the protection of Native American burial sites allow this one to be destroyed?

A variety of explanations have been given for what happened. Many are, however, a bit suspect. Because of what was found and what was done at the Lincoln Mounds, no one wants to take full responsibility. Finding support in the written record for the various explanations given is problematic because the Lincoln Mounds decision-making process is so poorly documented. But it is worth going over the record, once again, to try to arrive at some explanations, however, incomplete and unsatisfactory they are.

The Back Story

It has been sixteen months since late August 2004, when Michael Scott and Jim Anderson of the Mendota Dakota Community went to the Lincoln Mounds site in Bloomington one afternoon and encountered Jim Jones of the Minnesota Indian Affairs Council (MIAC) coming out of a trench at an archaeological excavation. Jones told them that the remains of one Dakota ancestor had been found. The next day there was press conference during which some of those concerned about the excavation briefly entered the tent where the dig was taking place. They left shortly thereafter and gathered on the perimeter of the site.

For more than a week after that, members of the Mendota Dakota and their supporters occupied a site near the archaeological excavation, holding a vigil to bear witness to what was going on. During the second week in September they held a prayer ceremony and then dispersed.

A few days after this the Mendota Dakota received an anonymous letter saying that, contrary to what Jim Jones of MIAC had told reporters, the remains of more than twenty human beings had been found at the site in Bloomington and that they were arranged in a circle with adults on the outside and children or infants on the inside. Despite this find, the excavation was being continued and the remains would be removed, and the letter writer ascribed these activities to motives of greed on the part of some of those making the decisions.

Now that a rough draft of the report about the site has been made public, we know that there were almost three times as many sets of human remains as the anonymous letter suggested, and they were arranged in two configurations, not one, although the arrangements were square or oval rather than circular. Also, though there were disturbances in the general area of the development, the mounds themselves were comparatively undisturbed.

The letter writer accurately described the scale of excavation, but the writer’s ascription of motives of greed has not been proven. And the actual decision-making process that led to the removal of these remains has yet to be explained fully. This is still the puzzle about the Lincoln Mounds. How was it that the MIAC, the agency which for so long has been the first and last defense against the desecration of Native American cemetery sites, made the decision to remove such a significant site? The various answers suggested have been vague and unsatisfying.

When Michael Scott and Jim Anderson first encountered Jim Jones at the excavation, Jones did not just tell them a single skeleton had been found. He also informed them that any remains found would be removed, that it was too late to do anything else, but that it was being handled respectfully. It was being done in “the right way.” This was an explanation that would be repeated in the weeks and months to come, though with few details.

At that point in late August 2004, just one week before an anonymous source accurately specified at least twenty human burials at the site, Jim Jones must have known that the site held far more than one set of remains. The dig began on July 19, six weeks earlier. It is unreasonable to suggest that the archaeologists uncovered nineteen burials in the week before the letter was written. Thus by the end of August MIAC had to know that the site was significant and contained a substantial number of remains. It was, in the words of the state law, a “large Indian burial grounds,” just the sort of site that the law calls for preserving rather than removing.

If the presence of many remains was known by late August 2004, and the MIAC was adamant that the remains were being removed, Jones’s assertion that it was too late to do anything else is confusing. MIAC is the only agency that can permit the removal of an Indian cemetery. When did MIAC decide that removal was the proper course? And why?

The Law and the Myth

Anyone who hopes to understand how human remains are treated archaeologically in Minnesota has to learn about the way Minnesota law works. But they must also understand the personalities, the feuds, the suspicion and the sheer dysfunctional nature of the way the archaeological community in Minnesota has operated for many years. And they must also understand the cluster of beliefs that people involved in these activities hold about Mark Dudzik, who resigned his position as State Archaeologist in July 2005 for personal reasons.

Minnesota law has stringent protections for cemeteries and burial places of all kinds. The relevant portion of the Minnesota Private Cemeteries Act starts with this declaration of purpose, which applies equally to prehistoric and historic burial sites and formally designated cemeteries:

To achieve the protection of all burial places, initial authority is given to the State Archaeologist: “The state archaeologist shall authenticate all burial sites for purposes of this section and may enter on property for the purpose of authenticating burial sites.” If while authenticating burial places the State Archaeologist determines that remains found are Native American, the participation of the MIAC in the process is triggered:

Finally, it is important to note that a further role is given to the MIAC in determining what should happen to a Native American cemetery, so authenticated and identified by the parties involved:

Minnesota law thus sets up two parties, the OSA and the MIAC, as instrumental in the process of authentication and identification. The law gives the State Archaeologist primary initial authority to authenticate burial places—that is, to determine the presence of Native American remains. Subsequent authority for what happens to them is almost entirely in the hands of the MIAC, the only party given the authority under law to allow Native American cemeteries to be moved.

These are basic outlines of the law relating to the treatment of Native American burial sites in Minnesota. But although they may appear to divide authority fairly clearly, there are a number of problems with the law that leave it open for disagreements in specific cases. Many of the problems involving burial sites in Minnesota have arisen because of these differing interpretations.

For one thing, what exactly does “authenticate” mean, and how should it be applied in practice? A dictionary definition would suggest that to authenticate something is to prove that it is what it is claimed to be. In this case, that would mean that an authenticated burial place under Minnesota law would be a place where “human burials or human skeletal remains” are found in the ground.

But in some cases, there may be Native American mounds in which no burials can be found, either because there never were any there or because bones have either disintegrated through natural process or been removed through vandalism or the action of animals. On the other hand, mounds containing burials may exist in the landscape but not be visible any longer because their surfaces have been lowered to the height of surrounding landscapes.

Over the years, the State Archaeologist Mark Dudzik appears to have insisted on a higher level of proof for authenticating Native American burials than the Indian Affairs Council believed was necessary. The Council has asserted, for example, that if burial sites were located by the archaeologist Theodore Lewis in the 19th century, as thousands of such sites were, this should be considered “sufficient to establish the authenticity of a burial site.” The State Archaeologist, however, has required that actual human remains be located in the ground at such sites before he would authenticate them.

Beyond such differences of opinion about what constituted authentication, there is a further difference of opinion that arose between the two agencies relating to the actual methods used to authenticate burial sites. One of the most frequent criticisms made by archaeologists and Indian people of the State Archaeologist Mark Dudzik was that he would allow the use of mechanized equipment during the process of authentication, particularly a method of stripping the soil from an area in very thin layers using a backhoe or a so-called belly scraper or self-loading scraper.

Many archaeologists make use of mechanical stripping under particular circumstances. One archaeologist contacted recently stated that there were large differences between the kinds of equipment used in mechanical stripping. For example, he noted that while a belly scraper made it possible to remove very thin layers of soil over a large area, economically, a backhoe operated by an experienced person could actually be a more sensitive tool because it could remove soil from a location without having to drive across the surface of soils containing fragile remains. The shovel of a backhoe can be made into a scraper by welding a straight metal plate along its toothed edge, which can then be drawn along the ground to remove soil in thin layers.

Although many archaeologists accept the practice of mechanical stripping, the Indian Affairs Council and some Indian people view it as culturally insensitive and potentially damaging to delicate human remains when used in burial authentication. The Indian Affairs Council preferred the use of shovel testing and soil boring to help locate burial sites.

These differences in definition and practice between the two agencies are laid out in detail in a report prepared by the Minnesota Legislative Auditor in 2001 looking into the Office of State Archaeologist. The report provided a detailed look at the dynamics of the relationship between the OSA and MIAC, and other agencies and tribes. Despite the disagreements between OSA and MIAC, the report noted that there had been occasions when the agencies worked together. The report also stated that despite the problems between the OSA and MIAC, 18 out of 22 tribal representatives interviewed felt that their working relationship with the OSA was fair or good.

According to the Legislative Auditor, some of the major differences between OSA and MIAC had to do with the problem of authentication and the use of mechanical excavation of burial sites. The report noted that under archaeological guidelines in Wisconsin mechanical stripping of topsoil at burial sites was considered appropriate when historic maps suggested the presence of burial sites but surface indications were lacking. It mentioned that the Minnesota Bureau of Criminal Apprehension [BCA] used mechanical excavation to uncover “clandestine graves in murder cases,” reporting “only one incident of bone damage using this technique in the last 19 years.” It also noted that the previous State Archaeologist—who worked more closely with the Indian Affairs Council—sometimes used mechanical stripping.

In response to these statements in the Legislative Auditor’s Report, the Indian Affairs Council wrote a letter, also contained in the report, stating that under the previous State Archaeologist mechanical stripping was never used in the authentication process, but only in cases where burials were to be removed and only “after hand excavation had been completed.” It also made the point that “surveyed cemeteries are not murder scenes. The BCA approach is irrelevant to this situation.”

As an example of the differences between the agencies, the report described a case involving a proposed development in suburban Hennepin County in 1997. A housing developer sought to develop a site where burial sites had been surveyed in the 19th century. The State Archaeologist notified the MIAC but took the lead in what happened next:

MIAC was unhappy with this result. This case cemented the belief that the State Archaeologist was willing to do things that might destroy sites important to Indian people. Concerned about what happened in cases such as this, the MIAC passed a resolution in 1998 seeking the removal of the State Archaeologist.

Beyond the differences about authentication and the methods to be used it doing it, it should be noted that there were other factors, some rooted in the laws defining the roles of the OSA and MIAC, some personal. Mark Dudzik was quick to assert the primary or initial role of his office in the authentication process, and MIAC was quick to take offense at this assertion.

To be sure, the relative roles of the MIAC and OSA have changed over the years. At an earlier time, the two agencies appear to have had a more equal roles in the initial authentication of American Indian burial sites. But in 2001, when the Legislative Auditor noted the change in the law and the current primary role of the State Archaeologist, Joe Day of the Indian Affairs Council simply denied the statement, saying that “the Indian Affairs Council does not agree that the State Archaeologist has sole lead authority for application of the burial protection statutes within Minnesota.”

The statement appeared to deny that a primary role in authentication meant “lead authority” over Native American burial sites. However one might view the legal conclusion or semantics behind it, the statement was a sign of the sensitivity of the Indian Affairs Council to anything that might be viewed as diminishing its authority over burial sites. In 1998 and 1999, the MIAC unsuccessfully sought legislative authority for the entire process of identification and authentication of American Indian burial sites.

Beyond these differences over law, there was simply the matter of personality. In carrying out his job, Dudzik could be blunt. Some people appreciated this fact as an indication that they were receiving the information they needed with little delay. But even Dudzik’s friends state that he could be arrogant and sometimes touchy: there were days when you did not mind dealing with him, and other days when he could be “a bear.”

Because of the disagreements and friction between OSA and MIAC, over the years of Mark Dudzik’s work as State Archaeologist, it came to be more and more commonly believed by some archaeologists and some Indian people that Mark Dudzik had only the best interest of developers at heart, that he would like nothing better than to bring in a backhoe and destroy a burial site. The belief took on the proportions of a myth, not because there were no genuine differences involved, but rather because the beliefs about Mark Dudzik appear to have outgrown the man himself and the worst allegations about him could often simply not be corroborated.

What Happened in Bloomington

To say that the communication between the MIAC and the OSA has been difficult in recent years is an understatement. Recently Jim Jones stated that relations were so bad that MIAC did not have direct access to the database that the State Archaeologist maintains to record archaeological sites in the state. When he needed to learn about specific burial sites, Jones said that he depended on Newton Winchell's Aborigines of Minnesota, a 1911 compendium of information gathered on burial mounds in Minnesota in the 19th century.