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Artifacts give us a priceless window into the past, but the laws protecting our past are no more than a Band-Aid on a hemorrhaging patient. Somehow, our personal property rights have come to include prehistoric structures that none of us built, and artifacts that can be willfully destroyed if we happen to hold title to the land. We are about the only civilized nation in the world that allows this unrestricted, unrepentant erasure of history.
Inadequate laws have created a thriving business in backhoe archeology and looting on both public and private lands. It again came to the forefront June 10 when a federal sting operation netted 24 people charged with pothunting and trading in stolen antiquities in the Four Corners area.
I consider this whole episode tragic, and I blame all of us, especially politicians without the courage to pass laws removing the money incentive from the picture. There really should be a public outcry, but the 24 indicted are no more than scapegoats in what is a much broader issue.
Some may not feel archeological preservation laws are important, but like all laws it is not our personal liberty to pick and choose which we obey or ignore. To me, the real question is, are the laws just or adequate? Because if archeological protection laws were designed to fail, then they have succeeded big time.
The Archeological Resources Protection Act targets looters and a few dealers, while all others walk away unscathed. Demand
This vast network is systematically robbing Utah and the nation of our prehistoric past. Worst of all, it is both legal and illegal, depending on what patch of land you stand, private or public. You can drive a D-9 CAT through this loophole and never see the sides of the trench!
As Americans, we resent double standards, but here's one of the biggest. You can legally dig and sell artifacts or bulldoze and pillage archeological sites if you own the land. Legal title confers a government-endorsed license to steal, and a license to kill, the unwritten past.
These artifacts need to be protected in Utah museums, to be seen and appreciated by the public and visitors from around the world, not dispersed around the world.
The deeper problem is that we somehow view pottery and artifacts as a commodity to be bought and sold. If your house is broken into, inevitably it is your photographs and family heirlooms that you value most. Everything else can be replaced, but your photographs and mementos represent who you are, bring back memories, and tell your family stories.
Archeological sites, pottery and artifacts are our public heirlooms and it is the same in southeast Utah as it is in your home. They are our national treasures and our only link to histories yet to be written. Yet we make nonsensical distinctions between public and private land that invite systematic destruction of both.
For most crimes, there is no separation between private and public lands. Murder is murder and theft is theft, except that in this case we say theft is legal on private property, even if the owner is a felon convicted of looting on public lands.
Why is it consistently so hard to muster a little public backbone and say enough? We've done it before. In the early 1900s, songbirds were being slaughtered to provide colorful feathers for women's hats and feather boas. Entire species teetered on the edge of extinction. At that time, we the people said no to fashions that kill because we could see the eventual outcome.
If we can save songbirds and eagles by enacting clear, unambiguous laws that just say no , we can certainly do the same thing for prehistoric artifacts. Artifacts and ruins are finite, and the story they tell is in danger of being lost and gone forever.
The overarching truth is that our antiquities laws are political compromises and doomed to fail. It is time to declare artifacts off-limits for private possession, period. This century-old cat-and-mouse game (requiring expensive law enforcement, sting operations, and prosecution dollars) won't slow down until the money flow diminishes or until all of our artifacts and history are stolen.
At present, the laws are almost unenforceable in the vast canyon country of Utah and the Southwest. Professional diggers systematically work this giant loophole for treasure, buying and exploiting properties and then moving on to the next ruin. Call it what it is; legalized theft.
It needs to be addressed, once and for all, or we will never be able to protect our past from ourselves.
Gray Warriner is an independent filmmaker whose company has made over 50 films on Native American cultures and prehistory. He shares time between homes and offices in Utah and Seattle.
