Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: WEDNESDAY, July 7, 1993 TAG: 9307070045
SECTION: BUSINESS PAGE: B6 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: Associated Press
DATELINE: PASO ROBLES, CALIF. LENGTH: Medium
Chips of flint-like chert, cooking stones and abalone shell lie among the foxtails on a ridge above the Salinas River, remains of a settlement archaeologists say began at the time of the pharaohs.
Development has swallowed the other four known Indian sites in this economically struggling central California town.
A test dig in Paso Robles uncovered a finger bone and skull, which the coroner confirmed were Native American. An environmental report deemed the site a significant cultural resource. Descendants of the Indians who are thought to have dwelled here consider it the equivalent of a Christian cemetery.
"This is our sacred place," said Pilulaw Khus, a Chumash elder, as she surveyed the 39-acre shopping mall site from the top of a ridge.
Khus, who said she and other Chumash communicate with the spirits of their ancestors at the site, is among a group that has sued Pasadena developer James Halferty to stop the project.
Halferty said he might be able to change his plans, but the only sensible way to proceed with the mall is to knock the top off the ridge to help make the parking lot level, the store easy to see and to address geological and water problems. He said the finding of bones doesn't prove a formal burial site existed.
Archaeologist Clay Singer, who was hired by Halferty but quit in protest, scoffed at that notion. Singer said springs in the area, along with excellent fishing and food-gathering prospects, made it an established village site as long ago as 4,000 years.
"The Chumash did not have garbage disposals and they did not have funeral homes. And so at every one of these sites you find two things - they threw their garbage away behind their homes and they buried their dead in cemeteries," he said.
Until this week, Wal-Mart's stance was that while it supports the preservation of Indian culture, the Paso Robles problem was entirely Halferty's. The property where its store and 500 parking spaces will be is on another part of the shopping center site, it said.
But then the National Congress of American Indians, the oldest and largest intertribal group, met this week in Green Bay, Wis.
In a resolution, the congress urged Wal-Mart to take direct action to preserve the site and provide "tangible demonstration of support for Indian sacred sites when Wal-Mart pursues business ventures with any developers."
"In the alternative, NCAI would vigorously seek a boycott of all Wal-Mart stores in the continental U.S. by all Indian tribes," it said.
Thomas P. Seay, Wal-Mart's executive vice president for real estate, said he thinks there may be no burial site at all.
"If there are burial sites, though, he needs to do what the archaeologists and the Indians want him to do, which is not to disturb them," Seay said in a telephone interview from Wal-Mart's Bentonville, Ark., headquarters.
Wal-Mart's expansion plans have met opposition in many parts of the country. Last week, the retailer issued a news release protesting its characterization as "Sprawl-Mart" in the National Trust for Historic Preservation's recent announcement of endangered places.
by CNB