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| FEDERAL INVESTIGATION INTO MISSING REMAINS FROM EFFIGY MOUNDS NATIONAL MONUMENT |
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WPR News - Federal investigation into missing remains from Effigy Mounds National Monument
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Monday April 16, 2012
by Maureen McCollum
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(UNDATED) Federal investigators are trying to locate missing human remains from the Effigy Mounds National Monument in Iowa. The animal-shaped burial mounds along the Mississippi River are considered sacred, especially to the twelve Native American tribes affiliated with the monument.
After a former Effigy Mounds superintendent discovered a box of Native American remains in his home last year, park officials conducted a full inventory. They found that a few hundred bones and fragments were missing from a number of individuals.
Effigy Mounds Superintendent Jim Nepstad says the National Park Service has a special agent assigned to the case and many details are still under investigation, "Ultimately we want to get to the bottom of what happened. The main rationale is we want to do that to make sure this never happens again and we can't really ensure that it will never really happen again unless we totally and completely understand what happened."
Johnathan Buffalo is the Historic Preservation Director of the Sac and Fox Tribe of the Mississippi in Iowa, or the Meskwaki, which has treaty rights on the Effigy land. Buffalo says he doesn't think the remains were removed maliciously. Federal protections were placed on Native American remains about 20 years ago, so he says this is the past is catching up with the present, "But in some places there's still that mentality of we're objects. Our bodies are objects, what we made are objects, and we're owned by these museums,"
Buffalo says once the human remains are found, they would like to rebury them in the Effigy Mounds.
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