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A shell necklace scoured from ancient ruins makes for a rare collector's item in the white man's world and fetches thousands of dollars for a grave robber.
A clay pot with pre-Columbian black-and-white zigzags is a coveted mantel ornament in Santa Fe or Salt Lake City.
Here in Four Corners Indian Country, though, the cultural riches that federal authorities allege 24 traffickers plundered and peddled from public lands are anything but souvenirs.
"We aren't supposed to be digging up anything like that," Navajo medicine man David Filfred says. "It's the people who lived before us, and how they lived. They had their traditions, which deserve respect."
And disrespect for either human remains or the ancients' belongings brings deadly bad medicine. According to tribal lore, it can lead to bad luck, ill health, even death. Filfred points to what many here on the Navajo Nation call the "Anasazi sickness" as a factor in the suicides of two men indicted last month on federal charges of illegally trafficking in ancient Puebloan, or Anasazi, artifacts. "You'll get blacked out. Just faint," he predicts for those who disturb the dead. "It will cause something like, you don't care. Seems like there's no hope."
Other Four Corners cultures report similar spiritual repercussions or "bad energy" for artifact looters. Elders believe bones, pots, amulets and other items buried with the dead -- whether today's Navajos or yesterday's faded Puebloan cultures -- harbor spirits. These spirits command a wide berth and sicken those who disturb them, Filfred says. The torment may be either physical or mental.
Outsiders may scoff, but believers ask the same deference that other religions command.
Bless the living » Researchers who document the culture say the fear is real. "The elders feel really strongly about it," explains Robert McPherson, a historian and longtime humanities instructor who teaches at the College of Eastern Utah's San Juan campus in Blanding. "The younger people are also offended, but perhaps for a different reason." Younger Navajos, many of whom have been his students, are exposed to outside influences: schools, Christian churches, the modern Native American Church. Still, he says, they revere their heritage and want outsiders to leave their land, elders and graves unmolested.
Ten years ago it was Filfred's turn to bless a loved one and send him along to the spirit world. One of the medicine man's sons had died in the line of duty as a Navajo Nation policeman. He now is in a family cemetery here, near the Four Corners, wearing his ceremonial silver and turquoise, his favorite blankets and shells. It's a generous burial for the dead that also reflects graciously on the living, and it's not just for show.
"It's stuff that leaves with the body," Filfred says. "When you do that, when you're taking a body back to the earth and you're sending the spirit back to the spirit world, you get a good strong blessing.
"If you dress them like that, then, in turn, you will get blessings."
Dead zone » Filfred's Aneth home is the same kind of plain rectangular box that lines both sides of his dusty lane. On the paneled wall behind his chair hang two fly swatters, side by side, and a completed coloring page depicting Belle from Disney's "Beauty and the Beast."
Clearly a senior citizen, he won't divulge his age. "Too many moons," he laughs. He fixes his eyes on his outstretched feet and explains the traditions he learned as a young man. One was a clear warning: Don't mess with the dead or their belongings -- even those who were not Navajo.
Archaeologists say many of the artifacts seized in the federal sting appear to have come from burials. In some cases, defendants allegedly found bones with relics. In others, scientists say, items such as intact pots were so well preserved that they likely came from well-protected graves.
"In our tradition," Filfred says, "it's just like this law. You're just not supposed to be disturbed. That's it."
For their own protection, Filfred says, traditional Navajos assume that where there are artifacts on the desert there will be bodies.
"If you did [disturb the dead]," he says, "then it will affect you somewhere, or you will get sick in certain ways: Your health, mind, mentally and physically.
Such mysticism is a mystery to T. Rockwell, a middle-age Navajo who grew up here but attended a church school in Farmington, N.M. Her parents never mentioned the old beliefs about the dead, she says, and medicine men who conduct regular traditional dances shield women from some of the practices.
Still, she knows about the "Anasazi sickness" -- she manages the Aneth Senior Center, where she is surrounded by dozens of elders daily -- and she knows it is said to afflict disrespectful "belaganas" (whites) and Navajos alike. She just doesn't know the details.
For her, it's enough just to show respect, and to expect the same from would-be looters. "If they have something sacred -- what they consider sacred," she says, "I'm sure they wouldn't want us to go snooping around."
Other modern cultures also grew from the Four Corners and have distinct views of antiquities. While only some Navajo clans claim a link to the Anasazi or ancient Puebloans, the Hopis of Arizona draw a direct line.
"They regard these remains as being their direct ancestors," says Greg Johnson, assistant professor of religious studies at the University of Colorado. "They have more of a stewardship mission. They regard themselves as caretakers of the dead."
How to heal » Federal agents in Salt Lake City are storing an undercover operative's purchased artifacts from the sting and, in one case, the entire family collection of artifacts. Blanding doctor James Redd, 60, killed himself last month the day after he was indicted in the raid. His wife, Jeanne, 59, later pleaded guilty to seven trafficking charges and agreed to forfeit even those relics obtained legally on private lands. The couple's daughter, Jericca, 37, admitted to three felonies.
On July 7, agents and archaeologists confiscated two moving vans full of boxed artifacts from the Redd home.
A second defendant, 56-year-old Steven Shrader of Santa Fe, N.M., killed himself after last month's indictment while visiting his mother in Shabbona, Ill.
Federal law requires that those items considered culturally significant or associated with burials be repatriated to a tribe of possible relation: Navajo, Hopi, Zuni or Ute.
Like the Navajos, Utes teach that bones retain a spirit or "energy," says Forrest Cuch, a Ute who serves as Utah's director of Indian Affairs. His tribal elders suggested a "negative energy" may follow those who disturb the dead, but not necessarily the acute illnesses that the Navajos dread.
To the Navajo medicine man, there's just one way for looters to get well. They must recognize their errors and seek a ceremonial blessing. It requires sacred and secret herbs, Filfred says, previewing a scheduled visit from a New Mexico woman whose hair is falling out. She believes a childhood class tour of the Mesa Verde National Park ruins afflicted her.
Filfred will brew some of the herbs into a tea for her. He will burn others in her presence and then mix the powder with sheep fat to make a healing salve.
"We sing and pray," he says.
The seizures and headaches stop. Hopelessness vanishes. Blessings return.
A pothunter's lament.
Even the convicted artifact looter sometimes fears bad medicine.
In his 1992 book Sacred Land, Sacred View, Robert McPherson recounts an interview with Moab relic collector Earl Shumway. Now dead, Shumway was sentenced to 5 1/2 years in prison in 1995 for taking an infant's burial blanket and other items from Dop-Ki Cave in Canyonlands National Park. A previous conviction in the 1980s brought probation.
Shumway told of digging in an Anasazi grave when a rattlesnake bit him, McPherson writes. He dreamed of long knives leaping out of the ground and stabbing him, "which he associated with the body in the grave." The "inveterate pothunter" had found a medicine man's body with a medicine pouch containing arrowheads, herbs and pipes.
Later a dirt wall collapsed on the site, and in other visits Shumway broke an ankle and was overcome by a nest of stinging red ants.
"The supernatural powers of the dead man and his pouch were too much," McPherson writes.
'You just obey'
Bill Todachennie grew up not quite knowing what to think.
Now vice president of the Aneth Chapter, a unit of the Navajo government, he remembers being warned to steer clear of ancient sites, but not hearing a reason.
"You don't ask questions," he says. "You just obey."
In time, he learned of the "Anasazi sickness" associated with burial sites and artifacts, and came to fear it. But he doesn't skirt all ancient sites. He enjoys viewing the petroglyphs that dot the tribe's desert grazing lands and the yellow mesas that frame this village on the San Juan River. He always brings a digital camera because it's possible someone will remove or deface the rock art in time.
"Leave it as you find it," he implores visitors. "Leave your footprint and go home."
Bad luck or...
For more, see the Salt Lake Tribune.
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