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A re-consecration ceremony was held this past weekend at a damaged Indian mound in Oxford, Ala. As we reported last month, the 1,500-year-old sacred and archaeologically significant site was partially demolished during a taxpayer-funded economic development project, with the excavated dirt to be used as fill for construction of a Sam's Club, a retail warehouse store owned by Wal-Mart.
Following protests, the city appears to be backing away from the destruction, with a local landowner reporting that his property would be the source for the fill instead.
But it turns out the incident in Oxford is not the first time Arkansas-based Wal-Mart has been involved in the controversial destruction of sacred and/or archaeologically significant Native American sites.
Reader Marlin Mackley brought to our attention a similar incident in Fenton, Mo., a picturesque historic town along the Meramec River in the eastern part of the state. Inhabited for over 1,000 years, the area was home to the Fenton Mounds, two earthen burial structures dated between 600 and 1400 A.D. But in 2001, the Fenton Mounds were leveled for a Wal-Mart Supercenter.
Mackley wrote on the website he created to document what happened:
As a 15 year resident of Old Town Fenton I watched in tears as the Former Fenton Indian Burial Mounds Mesa as I call it was excavated. Over and above the crimes against human history perpetrated by these preditory developers we in my city have to look at the back of a plain block building set on top of a pile of rocks.
The St. Louis Riverfront Times newspaper reported how workers with SCI, the engineering firm hired to determine whether there were remains at the site, grew short on time so began digging less carefully -- and soon struck human bone. Recalled Debra Magruder, a member of the crew who later filed a complaint with the state:
"The story I heard was that the guy working in that area thought it was a tree root and used some root clippers and snapped it in half. Then, when they figured out it was a femur, they just covered it and left it, half sticking out, and a looter came and ripped it out of the mound." The femur was indeed protruding from within a stone box chamber. On Feb. 17, a survey crew lifted the tarp and found that someone had dug horizontally into the vault and stolen the bone.
Doing a little digging of our own, Facing South discovered that what happened in Oxford and Fenton were not isolated instances. There have been numerous cases involving destruction of Native American burial grounds and other culturally significant sites by Wal-Mart:
* An Indian burial site in Nashville, Tenn. was demolished to build a Wal-Mart Supercenter on Charlotte Pike in the late 1990s. The company behind the project was JDN Realty of Atlanta, a developer for Wal-Mart stores since purchased by Developers Diversified Realty Corp. of Ohio. By the time excavations were completed in August 1998, the remains of 154 people including children had been taken from their graves, according to the Alliance for Native American Rights.
* In the mid-'90s, Wal-Mart developer JDN was involved in the relocation of numerous native graves while building a store in Canton, Ga., Wal-Mart Watch reports. The store set up a permanent display of unearthed Indian artifacts next to its layaway counter.
* When an Indian burial ground was discovered during construction of a Wal-Mart Supercenter in the northern California community of Anderson, the company proceeded with the project anyway, opening the store in 2007. In June of this year, to make up for the site's desecration, the store erected a bronze statue of a native Wintu feather dancer that was vandalized before the dedication ceremony.
* In 2004, Wal-Mart opened a store in Mexico within view of the 2,000-year-old pyramids of Teotihuacan despite months of protests by local residents as well as prominent Mexican artists and intellectuals. In an interview with the Associated Press, novelist and poet..A re-consecration ceremony was held this past weekend at a damaged Indian mound in... more
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