Despite Warning, Border Wall Build Unearths Native Remains

(This content was created with the help of AI.) Border wall crews in Arizona have turned up what tribal elders long warned they would: Native American remains.

ProPublica reports that on Sept. 8, a National Park Service archaeologist at Organ Pipe Cactus National Monument, near the US-Mexico line southwest of Tucson, discovered human remains consistent with pre-colonial O'odham cremation practices.

The find came just two weeks after 89-year-old Hia-Ced O'odham elder Lorraine Eiler publicly cautioned that ongoing construction of a second wall through the monument would cut through ancestral burial grounds.

Under normal circumstances, the Native American Graves Protection and Repatriation Act would dictate what happens next.

But ProPublica notes that a sweeping Department of Homeland Security waiver issued in 2019 to speed wall building at Organ Pipe set aside that law and more than 40 others—and remains in force.

DHS has since expanded construction contracts in the region, even as the Tohono O'odham Nation fights a 62-mile wall segment in court and tribal leaders describe each disturbance of graves as a fresh wound.

For the full investigation and legal and tribal context, read the original piece at ProPublica.

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