If you turn up soil anywhere, except perhaps Antarctica, you'll probably find some human remains. We've been spreading ourselves all over the planet for something in excess of 100,000 years (6,000 if you're a fundamentalist). In essence, the whole world is living people above, cemetery below. After all, we don't bury folks up in trees.
Some local building project has been interrupted because of some Native American bones, approximately 6,000 year old bones. Some archeologist determined they were Ohlone, and thus contacted the remaining members of that tribe. The spokeswoman said these are her ancestors and can't be disturbed. I think of ancestors as going back perhaps ten generations. Beyond that we find ourselves in the deep end of the gene pool and have no idea who is related, or rather that everyone is related.
Naturally, these modern Ohlone folks had no idea there were ancestors buried there and wouldn't have, had not the builders dug them up. It seems a stretch, but then we've treated the Native Americans so badly that we know bend over backward to be respectful.
At the same time some Native Amcricans in Riverside Country are protesting another project. It seems that's the site of what they believe is where the world was created. Now, perhaps their preliterate ancestors believed that, but I'm sure the folks now protesting don't. I think we're all on the same page regarding cosmic creation (fundamentalists, please excuse me).
The telling thing is that these folks in Riverside County built a big casino complex near this sacred site, but again, that benefits them, so maybe "sacred site" is a relative term.
While I think that there are at least as many bad developments as there are good, I think this sacred site argument is just shy of silly. However, if the rest of the world doesn't agree with me, there's a spot on Signal Hill in Long Beach that I'm going to designate as a sacred site. It's where I lost my virginity.
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