Utah to Provide Native Tribes with Crypt for Ancestors' Remains
SALT LAKE CITY (AP) - The wandering shoreline of the Great Salt Lake
conjures an image Joe Louis Alex understands.
He believes the ever-changing shoreline stirred the spirits of his
ancestors from their centuries-long sleep and condemned them to an aimless
sojourn along the edges of the inland sea.
"The spirit needs to be put back in place and rested. They wander
around otherwise," said Alex, a Shoshoni leader. "It can be a kind of bad
spirit, if you have it out for long."
Thanks to the Utah Legislature, the ghosts of Alex's ancient for-
bearers will soon resume their rest.
Construction begins next month on a $60,000 Indian Burial Repository,
a concrete vault designed to hold 500 caskets at scenic Pioneer Trail State
Park in the foothills of the Wasatch Mountains, overlooking the lake.
It will solve the tricky problem of identifying which tribe ancient
remains belong to because the memorial crypt will be used by all in Utah:
Navajos, Utes, Paiutes and Goshutes, as well as Shoshone.
Park curator Ken Kohler expects to receive nearly 300 remains, inclu-
ding those of 77 Shoshone recovered in 1990, which have been warehoused in
cardboard boxes. Plans call for a dedication ceremony in September.
--End of story--
-Pat Crowe, SUNY at Buffalo