Sacred ground? Dig to determine
By Kristin Bender
Oakland Tribune
Article Last Updated:
09/26/2008
BERKELEY — Crews earlier this week began boring holes in the ground at the former oak grove next
to UC Berkeley's football stadium in an effort to prove that the 1.5-acre site is not a sacred Native American burial ground — as former tree sitters and their supporters have claimed, university officials said.
Workers from Orinda-based William Self Associates will spend the next two weeks digging 50 holes — each 35 to 50 feet deep — to check the site for Native American remains and artifacts, said Jim Allan, the company's vice president and archeologist.
Soil samples will be analyzed and findings should be available in mid-November, he said.
If anything is found — bones, bone fragments, artifacts — the university will work with the Native American Heritage Commission on proper removal, said university spokesman Dan Mogulof. Federal law doesn't not ban construction on sites once remains have been removed.
"The university was not legally obligated to undertake this investigation but we are committed to doing it and doing it right," Mogulof said.
But Allan said he doesn't believe Native Americans were buried at the site where the university plans to build a $125 million sports training center.
"There is no verifiable evidence for a burial ground at the site of the stadium," Allan wrote in a memo to the university last year. His stance has not changed.
"We've done a considerable amount
off research and there is nothing in the evidence that supports that it is a burial ground,'' he said Friday. "That's not to say there weren't burials nearby."
Those who were trying to save the grove, which was cut down earlier this month, disagree.
During a 21-month tree-sit at the oak grove, protesters claimed the Memorial Oak Grove is an ancient Ohlone Indian burial ground and that there is evidence of two shell-mound sites in the area, with at least 18 ancestral remains found within them.
In February 2007, tree sitter Zachary Running Wolf, who said he is a Blackfoot Native American, said an anonymous tipster left at the oak grove a copy of a 1925 archaeological site survey record that shows human remains were unearthed in the area beneath Memorial Stadium.
The document was accompanied by a San Francisco Examiner article from 1925 that said Leslie Spier, an assistant professor of anthropology at the University of Washington, had unearthed three bodies in the area and believed the remains were part of an American Indian burial site, according to published background on the controversy.
Although tree-sit ground supporters were adamant that they would be on site while the university was doing the survey, many did not return calls for comment this week. Running Wolf did not know the sampling was taking place.
"I happen to be involved in running for mayor (as a write-in candidate) right now and we are also doing a protest at KPFA and there's a lot going on right now," Running Wolf said, adding that the university work caught him "off guard."
Since the university announced its plan to build the sports training center nearly two years ago, there have been differing opinions about the sacredness of the site.
Corrina Gould, an Ohlone Indian, has gone on record saying the site was sacred to the Ohlone, while Malcolm Margolin, author of "The Ohlone Way," has said the site was a likely spot for a Ohlone village, according to published reports.
Andrew Galvan, curator at Old Mission Dolores in San Francisco and an Ohlone descendant who said he can trace his ancestry to the East Bay, has said the California Native American Heritage Commission in Sacramento provides information and guidelines for building on areas if remains of people of Native American origin are discovered or disturbed outside of a cemetery.
Kristin Bender covers Berkeley.
Reach her at
kbender@bayareanewsgroup.com.
