Artifact looters rob all of us

If you go on federal land, unearth ancient artifacts and take them home to sell them, that's obviously wrong.

It's not only criminal, but it robs all who benefit from the study of ancient people of the opportunity to have experts carefully excavate these sites and attempt to learn more how the early Pueblo Indians lived and died.

Worse, it shows profound disrespect for the sacred treasures that represent the heritage and beliefs of ancient peoples.

Given all that, the federal government should prosecute, to the fullest extent possible, the 24 men and women indicted this week in Utah's U.S. District Court in the theft and sale of more than 250 American-Indian artifacts from the Four Corners region. Among the people charged was Blanding physician James Redd, who was found dead on his property Thursday, the victim of an apparent suicide. Redd and his wife, Jeanne Redd, were previously charged with desecrating a corpse in an unrelated incident. Charges against Redd were eventually dropped, but Jeanne Redd pleaded guilty to a lesser charge and the couple paid $10,000 to settle a lawsuit brought against them by the Utah School and Institutional Trust Lands Administration.

The latest indictments stem from a two-and-a-half-year investigation dubbed "Cerberus Action," which keyed on an inside source who had been a "major dealer" of archaeological artifacts for a decade prior to approaching authorities, a federal search warrant unsealed Wednesday showed. (Cerberus is a multi-headed dog in Greek and Roman mythology that guards the gates of Hades.)

Between March 2007 and November 2008, the source met with dealers and purchased more than 250 artifacts for $336,000, the warrant stated. Most of the transactions were recorded on videotape or audiotape, the document said.

One of the accused called the government's prosecution "ridiculous." Charged with possessing two arrowheads, the defendant told the Deseret News that his indictment papers "were extremely weak." Still others rationalized that many people in the Four Corners area have such artifacts in their homes. That may be the case, but it doesn't overlook the fact that it is illegal to take anything from federal or tribal lands, let alone profit from it, without expressed permission of the federal government or tribal government.

As U.S. Attorney for Utah Brett Tolman explained at a press conference to announce the indictments, "Those who remove or damage artifacts on public or tribal lands take something sacred from all of us."

Even more powerful are the words of a St. George man sentenced to 10 months in 1998 for damaging and taking stone artifacts from sites in Washington County.

"I did not at all realize the seriousness of it. I am truly sorry … that I disturbed something that was not mine."

He went on to apologize to American Indians living and dead for disturbing sites "just so I could possess one of their artifacts."

It is hoped that upon the successful prosecution of these defendants they, too, will understand the gravity of these offenses and that disturbing these artifacts demonstrates gross disrespect of tribal people living and dead.