Among the 28 modern Native American communities in the Four Corners, the raids seemed like a long-overdue attempt to crack down on a travesty against their lands and cultures-“How would you feel if a Native American dug up your grandmother and took her jewelry and clothes and sold them to the highest bidder?” Mark Mitchell, a former governor of the Pueblo of Tesuque, asked me. Legal limitations on removing artifacts from public and tribal (but not private) lands date back to the Antiquities Act of 1906, but a tradition of unfettered digging in some parts of the region began with the arrival of white settlers in the 19th century. In some spots in the Four Corners, Operation Cerberus became one of the most polarizing events in memory. In all, they seized some 40,000 objects-a collection so big it now fills a 2,300-square-foot warehouse on the outskirts of Salt Lake City and spills into parts of the nearby Natural History Museum of Utah. They also discovered a display room behind a concealed door controlled by a trick lever. At another house, investigators found some 4,000 pieces. In one suspect’s home, a team of 50 agents and archaeologists spent two days cataloging more than 5,000 artifacts, packing them into museum-quality storage boxes and loading those boxes into five U-Haul trucks. The informant also accompanied diggers out to sites in remote canyons, including at least one that agents had rigged with motion-detecting cameras. Wearing a miniature camera embedded in a button of his shirt, he recorded 100 hours of videotape on which sellers and collectors casually discussed the prices and sources of their objects. Agents enlisted a confidential informant and gave him money-more than $330,000-to buy illicit artifacts. The search-and-seizures were the culmination of a multi-agency effort that spanned two and a half years. Ogden, announced the arrests as part of “the nation’s largest investigation of archaeological and cultural artifact thefts.” The agents called it Operation Cerberus, after the three-headed hellhound of Greek mythology. attorney general, Ken Salazar and David W. Later that day, the incumbent interior secretary and deputy U.S. Similar scenes played out across the Four Corners that morning as officers took an additional 21 men and women into custody. At one hilltop residence, a team of a dozen agents banged on the door and arrested the owners-a well-respected doctor and his wife. An enormous cloud hung over the region, one of them recalled, blocking out the rising sun and casting an ominous glow over the Four Corners region, where the borders of Utah, Colorado, Arizona and New Mexico meet. © 2014 Simon & Schuster UK (E-kirja): 9781471131455At dawn on June 10, 2009, almost 100 federal agents pulled up to eight homes in Blanding, Utah, wearing bulletproof vests and carrying side arms. A powerful and personal polemic, A Thousand Shards of Glassis Michael's appeal to his fellow citizens to change their course a cautionary tale to those around the world who idealise an America that never was and, crucially, a glimpse beyond the myth, to a country whose best days could still lie ahead. These essays, letters and journal entries were written as a farewell to the country Michael loves still, and to the wife he knew as his 'True North'. It was a broken place, bred from fear and distrust - a thousand shards of glass - filled with a people who long ago had given away all that was precious a people who had been sold, for so long, a foreign betrayal that finally came from within, and for nothing more than a handful of silver. One night, travelling where those who live within illusions should never go, he stared into the darkness and glimpsed a faded flag where shadows gathered, revealing another America. Once upon a time, Michael Katakis lived in a place of big dreams, bright colours and sleight of hand. A visceral and eviscerating lament for the USA, the country Katakis loved but can no longer bear to live in.
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |