Study focuses on grave site desecration

MUKILTEO, Wash. – Washington state’s historical preservation officer said Tuesday her department is probably told of only a small percentage of human remains that are discovered during construction or agricultural activity.

Purposeful desecration of graves is a felony, but Washington law governing grave sites is a hodgepodge with no consistency about how, when or whom to notify when human remains are inadvertently discovered, said the preservation officer, Allyson Brooks.

“There is no clear process,” Brooks said. “Every county has a different system.”

In the Washington Legislature’s most recent session, Sen. Mary Margaret Haugen, D-Camano Island, introduced a bill to protect Native American and pioneer grave sites, but it died without being brought to a floor vote. The Legislature, however, appropriated $100,000 to study the issue.

To launch that effort, state and tribal officials gathered Tuesday at the Future of Flight Building at Paine Field-Snohomish County Airport to sort out complications and try to preserve Washington’s heritage, both Native and non-Native.

“This is about all human remains,” said Haugen. On Tuesday, it was announced that $85,000 of the money allotted by the Legislature will go to pay Bellingham consultants Eppard Vision, which will lead a study with the assistance of a team of experts that includes two tribal members.

Although neither of those tribal members represents an Eastern Washington tribe, Craig Bill, of the governor’s Office of Indian Affairs, said the consulting team will reach out to tribes from across the state.

Participants in Tuesday’s forum said a comprehensive law on human remains is overdue. They cited the example of the 2004 depredation of the Tse-whit-zen burial ground in Port Angeles. In that case, the Washington Department of Transportation had started construction on a large dry dock when workers came across what proved to be the largest Indian village ever discovered in the state. The department eventually walked away from the site and the episode cost the state at least $90 million.

Also, Spokane-area tribes recently learned of the 1990 desecration south of Cheney of a burial ground that is one of the state’s oldest pioneer cemeteries.

Representatives of two legislative committees, the Department of Archaeology and Historic Preservation, the governor’s Office of Indian Affairs, the Department of Licensing, the attorney general’s office, the Northwest Building and Construction Trades Council, the Forest Protection Association and the Washington state Association of Coroners and Medical Examiners were just some of the groups in attendance.

There to moderate the group was former Secretary of State Ralph Munro. Brooks, the historic preservation officer, laid out the problem that some — or perhaps many — grave sites aren’t reported.

As Munro explained, builders don’t know what to do when they uncover remains. The system is so complicated it would be easier to ignore remains and move on than risk stopping a project in its tracks.

In Washington, skeletal remains are under the jurisdiction of a coroner or medical examiner until they are determined to be nonforensic, said Kathy Taylor, a forensic anthropologist for the King County Medical Examiner’s Office.

Once that determination is made, any number of agencies or tribes might have jurisdiction.

Dennis McFee, program manager for the Cemetery Board, which is under the auspices of the Department of Licensing, said his staff is responsible for 152 private cemeteries across the state. An even longer list of burial sites remains outside his jurisdiction.

McFee asked who is responsible for these remains, and who pays when they need to be moved.

Tribes would like to see a law that requires anyone who uncovers suspected Indian remains or artifacts to report them at once to the nearest tribal government. Tribes also would like a means to educate the public of the significance of such finds.

“Tribes need to have the primary say in what is done with ancestral remains, not the state,” said Armand Minthorn, of the Confederated Tribes of the Umatilla Indian Reservation in northern Oregon. The Umatillas’ traditional lands extend into southern Washington.

Rep. John McCoy, D-Tulalip, who was the host of Tuesday’s forum, said comprehensive legislation cannot be accomplished in one legislative session. Any attempt to do it in one huge bill would be doomed from the start, he said.