Court Won’t Bar Indian Skeletons’ Reburial

A federal court judge, ruling in a dispute between rival Indian groups, refused Wednesday to order Ventura County to halt the removal of Indian skeletons from an ancient burial ground uncovered in a flood-control channel near Point Mugu.

U. S. District Court Judge Pamela A. Rymer held that representatives of the Southern Council of the Coastal Band of the Chumash Nation failed to show during two days of testimony that moving the bones denied Chumash Indians the right to practice their religion.

The Coastal Band filed a $50-million lawsuit against two other Indian groups, as well as as county, state and federal agencies, protesting their plan to exhume the remains of at least 20 Indians from the Calleguas Creek flood-control channel and rebury them several miles away in a Thousand Oaks park.

In denying the Coastal Band’s request, Rymer wrote that the group’s objections were “more akin to personal preference” than a widely held religious belief.

“Though cultural history and tradition are vitally important to any group of people, these are not interests protected by the Free Exercise Clause of the First Amendment,” Rymer wrote.

Claims Religion Prohibits

Coastal Band medicine people testified last week that removal and reburial of their ancestors’ remains is prohibited by their religion because the souls of the dead would be disturbed.

Also, the medicine people testified, removing the remains will make the spot less attractive as a site for their religious rites. Having the bones washed out to sea as the result of natural erosion would be preferable to human intervention, they testified.

But Rymer said in her ruling that they had failed to show that the reburial plan “would seriously interfere with or impair these religious practices.”

Representatives of two Indian groups named in the suit, the Candelaria American Indian Council and the Ventureno band of the Chumash, said they believe the reburial plan is the best way to protect the remains of their ancestors from vandals and flooding.

Those two Indian groups claim to represent a majority of the Chumash Indians in Ventura County, but Coastal Band representatives dispute the claim.

Coastal Band members said the other two groups agreed to the reburial plan only after county officials offered to give them a long-term contract to manage Oakbrook Park in Thousand Oaks, a 427-acre county park that will eventually include an Indian cultural center, in addition to the reburied bones.

Coastal Band attorney Sidney Flores argued that the prospect of signing the potentially lucrative contract created a conflict of interest for the Candelaria and Ventureno groups. The Ventura County Board of Supervisors voted last week to negotiate with the Candelaria and Ventureno groups for management of the park.

Consultants Found Remains

Archeologists from the Center for Public Archeology at California State University, Northridge discovered the Indian remains after they were called in as consultants by the county. The county was required to survey the site because the area was granted federal protection as an archeological zone in 1976.

The skeletal remains date back to the 3rd Century, according to CSUN researchers.

The reburial project was prompted by threats from the Federal Emergency Management Agency to withhold $785,000 in flood-control funds unless the county acted to save the human remains from being washed to sea. The funds were promised after Ventura County was declared a federal disaster area in 1983 when rainstorms caused flooding that destroyed levees along the lower Calleguas Creek flood channel.

Ventura County is required by the federal government to pay for the reburial.

Work Suspended

The Federal Emergency Management Agency and the Army Corps of Engineers, both named in the suit, developed the reburial plan with county and state officials.

Work was suspended on the site in August until the Ventura County Board of Supervisors agreed to the reburial plan earlier this month.

$80,000 for Archeologists

The board agreed last month to spend about $80,000 to hire archeologists from CSUN to determine how many Indians were buried there and rebury them in Oakbrook Park. The archeologists have been working since Dec. 5, and county officials have said they will finish next week.

The board had rejected four proposals in October that included a $5-million plan to reroute the flood-control channel away from the burial site.