More than a year after it was completed, a state-funded $165,000 tomb for American Indian remains at the base of Emigration Canyon remains empty.
The bones that are supposed to be inside the Indian Burial Repository are still stored in cardboard boxes at Utah State University in Logan and the Utah Museum of Natural History in Salt Lake City.Some members of the Northwestern Band of the Shoshoni aren't happy with the tomb's Salt Lake location.
They wanted it to be built on Antelope Island, near the spot the remains were found, but state park officials said regulations prohibited it from being built there.
And members of other Utah Indian tribes believe they weren't given enough say in the project and thus want nothing to do with it, said Bill Fawcett, a Utah State University anthropologist.
Rep. Eli Anderson, D-Bothwell, who championed the project, said he's disappointed there is so much controversy.
"We wanted to get the remains out of institutions and give them a place to put them to rest," Anderson said. "Otherwise, those spirits were wandering aimlessly."
The remains are among those uncovered in 1990 when the Great Salt Lake receded from record-high levels of the 1980s. The high water scoured away vegetation and the first few layers of sediment, leaving all or parts of about 100 skeletons revealed.
Gov. Norm Bangerter, whose tenure ended in 1992, came up with the idea of building a repository for those remains and others found in Utah, Anderson said. When Bangerter left office, Anderson adopted the project.
An attorney for the Northwestern Band and one of its tribal leaders, Joe Louis Alex, were among those who signed-off on the original design and placement at what is now This Is The Place State Park, Anderson said.
The Legislature appropriated $60,000 to pay for the project. But change orders that added stainless steel shelves and other costs pushed the price tag to $165,091.
The land was blessed at the repository's ground-breaking, and another ceremony was conducted at its June 1996 completion and dedication, Anderson said. The 500 caskets built by the Northwestern Band have been completed.
Still, the tomb stands empty.
"No one has contacted me about it," Anderson said. "I have not been contacted by any Indian people who say that they are dis-satisfied."
There could be several reasons the bones haven't been transferred, said Mae T. Parry, a member of the Northwestern Band and the governor-appointed council comprising members from all of Utah's American Indian tribes.
On Aug. 8 , Wil Numkena resigned his post as Utah State Indian Affairs director to take a job on his native Hopi reservation in Arizona.
That has brought much business to a standstill, Parry said.
In a telephone interview from Arizona last week, Numkena said the final, formal decision to put the remains in the repository must come from the Northwestern Band's tribal council. But no such decision has been made.
"I have talked to a couple of our tribal council members. We haven't discussed it as a full council yet," Tommy Pacheco, acting council chairman, said Sunday.
The council meets later this month, and the subject might come up there, Pacheco said.
Alex, the Northwestern Band representative who helped plan the project, died a couple of years ago. And ongoing internal political problems within the Northwestern Band's tribal council, which has two of its seven positions open, may have stalled the project, Parry said.
At least one of the council members, Leland Pubigee, has repeatedly said he is opposed to the repository's placement in Salt Lake City. It belongs on Antelope Island, which the tribe considered sacred, he said.
"There are always Indians who are upset about something, but I don't think that's what's holding it up," Parry said. "The tribal matter doesn't make it any better. But as soon as we get a new (Indian affairs) director, I don't think there will be any problem getting those remains in that box."