Yosemite Natives - Yosemite Park excavation - 2002 Part 4

Part 4, in the year 2002 Yosemite National Park was excavating around the Lower Yosemite Falls. This is the same spot that one of Chief Tenaya's villages was located.

They did this not for research but to put a new toilet over the old site for tourists.

When the Park Service was excavating a group of Yosemite area Native Americans came upon the digging and were surprised. It seems that their own supposed tribal leaders from the Southern Sierra Miwuks did not tell them about this project. Interestingly many of the group did not know the Indian monitor, whose name was Chris Brochini, was part of the Southern Sierra Miwuk group. You can tell because some asked who he was, what his connect to Yosemite National Park was, and what his last name was. They didn't recognize him or the Brochini name at that time and that was in 2002.

Most of the time it appears that the Indian monitor was not even paying any attention to the excavation done by the Park.

I believe they were not following correct NAGPRA protocol. Many Paiute people object to non-profits being used to dig up our ancestors. Most of the earliest Indians of Yosemite were Paiute people and not Miwoks. So why would they have only a Miwok Indian monitor?

We believe that the Southern Sierra Miwuk aka the American Indian Council of Mariposa should at least have consulted with its members first before they ok'd this project. There appeared to be NO communication at all and that is why the Yosemite Indian people were surprised when they approached the site.

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