Native American and historic groups continue to feud with the University of California, San Diego (UCSD) over a historic and archaeological site formerly used to house the campus’ chancellor.
UCSD has planned to demolish its 55-year-old Chancellor’s House since 2006. Sitting on 7 acres of ocean bluffs in the exclusive La Jolla Farms area, the 4,000-square-foot Pueblo-style house and 7,400-square-foot area allocated to public meetings has been vacant for several years following findings that it was unsafe due to a lack of earthquake retrofitting.
The university’s final proposal was to construct a 10,800-square-foot public meeting center that would include a private residence.
The site has been a continuous archaeological resource, producing nearly 29 sets of human remains and drawing the interest of the state Office of Historic Preservation and 12 Indian tribes of the Kumeyaay Cultural Repatriation Committee, who declared it their mission to preserve and protect remains and sacred lands through a national program called NAGPRA (Native American Graves Protection and Repatriation Act).
“You’ve caught quite possibly the most significant public burial ground in the New World, and you’re willing to dig that up to put in a fancy meeting center,” said La Jollan Courtney Coyle, attorney for Carmen Lucas, one of two Native Americans who oversaw excavation during the 2006 construction. “That calls into question good judgment.”
Although Coyle said the Native Americans aren’t asking UCSD to give up ownership of the burial site, their focus remains on retrieving remains and artifacts excavated there.
“The Indians said they want three [of the 29 sets of remains that have been found] back,” Coyle said. “That’s after investigating … [The university] found they did have the collections, and they aren’t taking responsibility for those taken before [the university] owned the property.”
The State Office of Historic Preservation recently nominated the house and land to be added to the State of California’s list of historic sites under the National Preservation Act; the site met three out of four qualifications, including its archaeological, scientific and architectural value.
Although the site was added to the state’s list under Section 106 of the National Preservation Act, the next step will be to send it to Washington for national approval, said Cindy Tosselmier, state historian for the Office of Historic Preservation.
But university officials two years ago approved a proposal to demolish the Chancellor’s House and build a new, bigger dwelling with a meeting center and visitors residence. The project, which was estimated to cost nearly $8 million at the time, drew the attention of the Kumeyaay Indians. The group sent a repatriation request regarding human remains and artifacts taken from the site in 1976.
The Native Americans designated the site of the Chancellor’s House a sacred burial ground.
According to Coyle, the Smithsonian dated the remains found there to more than 10,000 years “” older than the Kennewick Man, a 9,000-year-old skeleton found in 1996 in the Pacific Northwest. Those remains spawned a conflict between the area’s Native Americans and scientists that resulted in court proceedings and a Senate bill as recent as November 2007 that gave the area’s Native Americans custody of the archaeological dig, even though the remains were too ancient to prove they belonged to their tribe.
UCSD is ripe with archaeological sites, including the land around the Chancellor’s House. The school looked at building at a different site elsewhere on the campus, Coyle said, but that area had archaeological issues, too.
A lot of historical work has been done at that site, said Dolores Davies, UCSD’s executive director of university communications and public affairs. In the 1970s, remains were unearthed.
“So the remains uncovered were sent to the Smithsonian, and we have made major efforts to get the remains back to San Diego and were finally successful in doing that,” Davies said. “But because the remains are Native American, NAGPRA stepped in. They began a long repatriation process. We can’t just hand [the remains] over.”
But Coyle said the remains arrived in poor condition. After Cal State Northridge excavated on the property some years ago, the remains traveled to UCLA, according to Coyle. From there, they went to the San Diego Museum of Man. Then in 2000 they went to the Smithsonian for seven years, she said.
“Then KCRC [Kumeyaay Cultural Repatriation Committee] made a claim to UCSD,” she said. “They said, ‘Hey, look, those are ours.'”
So the remains then traveled back to the area, to the San Diego Archaeological Center, under the repatriation law.
“They weren’t even remains anymore, they were just fragments,” Coyle said.
The San Diego Archaeological Center, also her client, allowed Coyle and UCSD’s attorney to watch the inspection.
“They were in the most disrespectful condition,” she added. “I saw them myself.”
Coyle said the human remains were not properly bagged and fell out of their boxes, calling into question the “integrity and the chain of custody.”
“I think the lawyer for UCSD was equally appalled,” she said.
Because these Native American remains are older than the Kennewick Man “” a finding that set precedence, according to Coyle, because the Indians in the area won custody of the skeleton “” they present a more scientifically significant site, she said. Also, because this is a multiple-burial site, Coyle said it is the biggest find in North America. But it hasn’t received the attention the Kennewick case drew because of the parties involved, she said.
“The tribes here tend to be private,” she said. “They try to take a studied approach.”
Coyle said the university’s approach to a final environmental report, from an attorney’s standpoint, wasn’t legal. To the university’s credit, she said, they did investigate the site using dogs and ground-penetrating radar, which found buried remains.
According to a report dated Jan. 15 of this year, the college proposed an alternative action approving a design that would build around areas in the ground where radar found anomalies that could contain remains or ruins.
Coyle recently joined Bruce Coons of Save Our Heritage Organisation and Roger Craig from the La Jolla Historical Society to speak with UCSD Chancellor Marye-Anne Fox about the progress, but instead they were asked to watch a video.
The video never mentioned that the university wanted to demolish the house, as per the environmental report, but only that it wants to incorporate walls, Coyle said.
According to Davies, the video provided information on the Chancellor’s House, its condition and how the environmental review process had been completed.
“We are reassessing our options because of the feedback we have gotten from these groups,” Davies said.
Davies said the university is trying to be sensitive to all parties concerned.
“The house has been closed,” she said. “It’s not inhabitable. We are looking at all the options, and looking for approval of the project.”
For more information on the Kennewick Man, go to www.kennewick-man.com. For more information about NAGPRA, go to www.nps.gov/history/nagpra.