Tribal artifacts returned to Maidu graves

Don Ryberg looks away as he kneels and pours a jar of beads into a freshly dug hole. He has been working in the mid-day heat, and it is hard to tell if it is sweat or tears that pour from beneath his dark glasses.

Though there is no body at this ceremony, for Ryberg it is like burying a family member.

The beads have been returned by Nevada County residents who took them from Tsi-Akim Maidu Indian burial grounds before such excavations were made illegal, and Ryberg is reburying them. It was not until 1990 that the United States took steps to curb the excavation and looting of Indian graves with the Native American Graves Protection and Repatriation Act, but Ryberg says that is no excuse.

"It wasn't illegal back in those days, but it wasn't right, either," said Ryberg, the Tsi-Akim chairman.

Digging up Indian graves was common practice in the United States for many years, with museums displaying many remains and burial artifacts and anthropologists using such items for research.

The Tsi-Akim Maidu are western Nevada County's native people, and signs of their presence abound in the form of grinding stones, pottery and burial grounds.

Staff at the Tsi-Akim office in downtown Grass Valley began receiving artifacts this year, with many residents tracing patterns of misfortune in their lives to their exhuming of Indian graves.

"When something happens to them, they might think, 'What I did was wrong and it is coming back to haunt me,' " Ryberg said.

For Ryberg, the risk of taking from Indian graves goes far beyond legal consequences. Those who have brought in graveyard beads have reported illness, injuries and car accidents, which Ryberg says relates to "bad spirits."

"These beads came from (the graves of) medicine people and are very powerful," he said, holding up a jar of beads he refuses to stare at.

In addition to spiritual ramifications, Tsi-Akim office manager Clara Deluca said there are health issues with the handling of beads, which are often mixed with bone fragments that could still contain diseases such as tuberculosis.

In what he said is the best way to put native spirits to rest, Ryberg takes the beads to the Maidu burial ground they came from - a location he insists on keeping secret for fear of future excavations - and performs a simple ritual.

On his knees, he calls to the "world maker" in Maidu, saying, "look at me God, look at me pray," before returning the beads to the earth. His dark glasses, he explains, offer protection from more than just the sun.

"Some Indian people wear sunglasses because (bad spirits) have to see your eyes to ... poison you," he said.

Ryberg's tribe has five known family members buried at the site, which he says personalizes the ceremony.

"It takes a lot out of me," he said. "I look at it as a spiritual thing, a healing for the tribe as well as the people (the beads) are returning to."

The Maidu used to number in the thousands, and Ryberg said many more burial grounds are likely to be in the area, known only to those who dig them up.

"These are probably just a few out of God knows how many (burial artifacts taken)," he said.