[MSN] Cultural pillagers leave trail of ruin. Tribal sites - A sentencing in Eugene adds to what may be the largest such looting bust ever.

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Cultural pillagers leave trail of ruin 
Tribal sites - A sentencing in Eugene adds to what may be the largest such
looting bust ever 
Wednesday, November 01, 2006
BRYAN DENSON 
The Oregonian 

The diggers moved like zombies across Central Oregon's high-desert
wilderness, looting artifacts from the graves, caves and ancestral homes of
long-dead Native Americans. 

Many were "tweakers," powered through the sand and sagebrush by
methamphetamine. They dug by sunlight and flashlight, making away with a
kneecap and a skeleton -- as well as baskets, bowls, spear points, skinners
and stone knives -- before federal agents caught up with them as part of a
massive investigation dubbed "Operation Bring 'Em Back." 

The government is set to wrap up the first phase of its 31/2-year inquiry
today in Eugene's new federal courthouse when a judge sentences the ninth
looting suspect in the case. Prosecutors, tribal leaders, government agents
and archaeologists will announce the seizure of more than 100,000 artifacts
in what federal authorities say might be the largest such antiquities bust
in U.S. history. 

Federal agents and an archaeologist told The Oregonian that before the
looters were captured, they dug up more than 100 cultural sites from Shaniko
to Lakeview, causing archaeological damage estimated at more than $1
million. 

Ten people have been convicted of looting artifacts or human remains in the
case, three more face criminal indictments, and nearly 20 others remain
subjects in the ongoing investigation, according to federal court records. 

The defendants deprived Americans of a chance to study the artifacts and
stole the history of Native Americans, said U.S. Attorney Karin Immergut.
Worse, she said, they desecrated human graves. 

"Talk about your loss of moral compass," Immergut said. "If you can't leave
human remains intact in their burial grounds, it strikes me that these
people would do anything." 

Two federal laws protect Native American tribes from the so-called "thieves
of time." One law -- the Archaeological Resources Protection Act of 1979 --
forbids the excavation or removal of tribal antiquities without a permit.
The other -- the Native American Graves Protection and Repatriation Act of
1990 -- protects ancestral bones. 

Some of the suspects in the Oregon case dug for both. Informants aid case 

The federal government manages 30,639 acres in Oregon. The rocky plains,
canyons and lava beds east of the Cascades are so vast that relics hunters
often go undetected, a great frustration to law enforcement officers
summoned to looted cultural sites. 

Three years ago, a pair of veteran federal agents -- special agents Dennis
Shrader of the Bureau of Land Management and Thomas Russell of the U.S.
Forest Service -- threw in together to catch some of the diggers and
dealers. 

The agents hired a pair of informants, one of whom mixed easily with the
meth users who looted graves and stole artifacts partly to fund their
addictions. 

That informant knew a lot about Native American artifacts because he had
gone undercover for much of 2002 to help state police detectives make a case
against Jack Lee Harelson, one of the most notorious antiquities thieves in
the West. 

The agents gave the informant a cover story to carry into his conversations
with suspected artifacts thieves. He posed as a buyer for a third party in
the Los Angeles area, which he said purchased ancient artifacts and bones to
fill a museum in Japan. 

The informant talked his way into the lives of more than a dozen Central
Oregon residents, shelling out thousands of dollars for artifacts and
joining some of them on their digs, court records show. In one significant
case, the informant paid $1,000 for a skeleton that had been dug up along
the Deschutes River in the BLM's Prineville District, court records show. 

The informant convinced his new friends that he needed documentation for his
"buyers" about where the relics were found. He talked a few of the suspects
into writing him receipts. A few posed for photographs alongside artifacts.
The informant paid extra cash for tours of the precise spots on public land
where the artifacts were excavated. 

In the early hours of Jan. 25, 2005, the informant and an undercover Forest
Service officer joined two suspects on a ride to the Paisley Ranger Station.
There the four men unbolted a historic replica of a Native canoe, lugged the
300-pound boat to a U-Haul van and drove away. 

Federal agents videotaping the scene let the suspects make it a few miles
down the road before arresting them. "It was amusing to watch it go down,"
Russell said. 

"These people are thieves, for the most part," he said. "They'd be stealing
out of a Wal-Mart or a Kmart if they weren't stealing off the National
Forest. . . . In this case, the money market is for artifacts. So that's
where they go." 

Hours later, as the sun came up over Central Oregon, an estimated 70 federal
agents, state police troopers, local police officers and sheriff's deputies
swept in to search 23 homes and a pair of mini-storage units. 

Focus shifts to collectors 

When Michael J. Orf of Redmond goes before U.S. District Judge Ann Aiken for
sentencing today in Eugene, he faces as long as five years in prison and a
$250,000 fine. Orf pleaded guilty to selling the government informant a
Native skeleton in early 2004. 

A photograph of Orf is likely to be entered into evidence today. It was
taken by the informant when he took possession of the skeleton. It shows a
smiling Orf holding the skull up in front of his chest as if he were showing
off a trophy fish. 

Orf's sentencing marks the end of Operation Bring 'Em Back's first phase,
said former federal prosecutor Jeff Kent. 

"The initial search warrants were focused upon diggers -- unlawful diggers
and unlawful traders," said Kent, who handled the case until his retirement
in January. 

"The next phase," he said, "would focus on those individuals who essentially
serve as buyers to increase their own collections or people who buy to trade
with others (on) the ever-escalating marketplace." 

Federal agents searched the homes of three major artifacts collectors in the
case. None of them -- Phillip Fields, 63,of Bly; Harold Elliot, 64, of La
Pine; and Miles Simpson, 44, of Bend -- has been charged with a crime, and
all three maintain their artifacts were collected legally. 

"Neither Miles nor I have done anything that would warrant this kind of
investigation," Elliot said.. Elliot and Simpson said they have never
knowingly bought any illegal artifact. 

Fields, one of the earliest subjects of the investigation, served a short
federal prison sentence in 1985 for digging up Cascade projectile points
from the China Hat archaeological site in the Deschutes National Forest.
According to court papers, he took the government's informant back to China
Hat, where he allegedly dug around with his hands to collect obsidian
flakes. Fields told The Oregonian that the government took his private
collection and that none of it was illegal. 

"We recognize," said Shrader of the BLM, "there is a black market for the
purchase of illegally obtained artifacts and human remains." 

The very idea of such a black market strikes many tribal leaders as vulgar,
especially those in often-looted spots such as the Four Corners region of
the desert Southwest and a vast stretch of the Great Basin in Oregon and
Nevada. 

"For whatever macabre reason, non-Indians feel that Native Americans are a
curiosity," said Wilson Wewa, a Northern Paiute spiritual leader and
historian from Oregon. "We're not a curiosity. We're people. We have
feelings like everybody else. . . . And those of us that take care of the
traditions and the spirituality of our people will always be involved in
protecting the remains of our ancestors." 

Bryan Denson: 503-294-7614; bryandenson at news.oregonian.com