Tribes, state officials hope to prevent more burial blunders
Published 5:06 am Sunday, July 1, 2007
PORT ANGELES – That great groan you heard across the North Olympic Peninsula last month was the collective sigh, “Oh, no – not again!”
Even as deconstruction continued at the former Hood Canal Bridge graving yard, archaeologists sifting earth for Native American remains at Beckett Point on Discovery Bay, while a $2.8 million septic system development was idled.
At the same time, work was stopped briefly on the Port Angeles International Gateway Transportation Center project in downtown Port Angeles, less than two miles away from the abandoned graving yard on Marine Drive.
The Gateway project was given the go-ahead on Thursday after a bone found there was determined to be not of archeological interest.
No one wants a repeat of the graving yard fiasco, where:
Gov. Chris Gregoire subsequently issued an order requiring state agencies to consider the possibility of desecrating graves – but the Beckett Point and Gateway projects’ origins predated those rules, set in November 2005.
Regulations for those projects required only a cursory forecast of finding remains or artifacts and stopping work only after they were found.
Meanwhile, however, tribal and non-tribal agencies have started new efforts to expand and strengthen predictions and protections.
