“To the best of our knowledge right now, those 2,000 bones represent about 500 human beings,” Tim Carpenter, who heads the FBI’s art theft unit, told CBS News in an interview that aired Tuesday. “I truly don’t know.”The ghoulish crime of digging up long-dormant graves has been an ongoing source of frustration for Native American communities. It took nearly 100 years before the Native American Graves Protection and Repatriation Act was signed into law in 1990, making it illegal to buy or sell Native American remains. “All too often here we have been treated as curiosities rather than a people,” Pete Coffey, a tribal official with North Dakota’s Mandan, Hidatsa and Arikara Nation, told CBS. In addition to copious Native American artifacts, Miller had reportedly collected priceless relics from countries including Australia, China, Haiti, Peru and Russia, and stored them in outbuildings scattered around his remote Waldron compound as well as in his commodious basement.

Source: Washington Post February 27, 2019 11:48 UTC