Woodland Indians Forum

tree hugger wrote:

bls926 wrote:

Brett? Have y'all been discussing this in private?

Uh and that would matter why?

It was a joke.  Notice the    .  Guess you had to be there.

Rich had called Little Old Man, Brett. Like he forgot who he was talking to.
Sorry, my attempt at humor.

tree hugger wrote:

Ohhh now I got it. Sorry, being slow again.

I swapped her coffee to decaf.

American Indian linked to federal artifacts looting case
Affidavits show vast trafficking, but one dealer calls probe political.

By Patty Henetz
The Salt Lake Tribune
Updated: 08/07/2009 11:50:31 AM MDT



A New Mexico man of American Indian descent had little trouble getting his hands on sacred Puebloan artifacts: He just walked onto reservations and bought bowls, Hopi kachina masks, Sun Dance skulls, eagle feathers, knives, pots and fetishes from tribal members.

Federal court papers filed in New Mexico say thousands of dollars' worth of those artifacts that Santa Fe resident Thomas "Tommy" Cavaliere is alleged to have sold to an undercover operative -- identified in Utah filings only as "the Source" -- ended up in the hands of federal authorities during a 2½-year undercover investigation of illegal artifacts trafficking across the Four Corners region.

The documents show how an investigation spread across four states after a former antiquities dealer offered his services in 2006 to the FBI in Utah, saying he wanted to infiltrate the worlds of amateur and professional collectors to curtail illegal trading.

The documents also reveal more about Steven Shrader, a Santa Fe man who stunned federal law enforcement officials when he shot himself to death in Illinois a week after he and 23 others were arrested and charged in Utah on more than 115 felony counts and a handful of misdemeanors.

Affidavits accompanying search warrants served on four Santa Fe residents the Source dealt with in 2008 depict a tony network of art and antiquities dealers who acquired relics such as kachina masks, fetishes and bowls purposely broken by
Puebloans as part of sacred rituals and then bartered and sold in the United States and Europe.

According to a Bureau of Land Management special agent who submitted the affidavits, it was Shrader who brought the Source into Santa Fe circles through an introduction to Cavaliere, a man Shrader said had connections in the pueblos and "commands the reservations" but who also pleaded guilty in 2002 to four counts of violating the Native American Graves Protection and Repatriation Act (NAGPRA) of 1990.

Shrader seemed a peripheral figure in the Utah bust, named only as a co-defendant with Durango, Colo., resident and close friend Vern Crites, who faces five felony counts in the case.

Shrader turned himself in to the FBI in Santa Fe two days after the Utah arrests. His home wasn't subject to search; he was scheduled for his first court appearance in Salt Lake City the morning he was found dead. His suicide came a week after Blanding physician James Redd, charged with a single felony in the case, killed himself with carbon monoxide while sitting in his Jeep on his property.

The affidavits say Cavaliere in turn introduced the Source to noted Santa Fe artist William "Billy" Schenck and Santa Fe antique tribal art dealer Christopher Selser. Schenck introduced the Source to Forrest Fenn, a prestigious Santa Fe antiques dealer and author. Federal agents searched the property of the four Santa Fe men and seized items from all of them. None of them has been charged.

Representatives of the New Mexico U.S. attorney's office on Thursday either were unavailable for comment or weren't familiar with the case.

Cavaliere's listed phone number in Santa Fe has been disconnected. There was no response to a request for an interview left Thursday with a woman at Fenn's business. Schenck didn't return a call seeking comment.

But Selser said the searches and prosecution of dealers were political and based on the Obama administration's interpretation of NAGPRA, whose application has been uneven since its 1990 passage.

"I'm doing the same thing today I was doing 38 years ago when I started in this business," he said.

Rather than honoring old treaties or compensating tribes for stolen land, the federal government has "offered up, kind of sacrificially, people like me," Selser said. "I am very cynical, and I feel very used."

Cavaliere, Schenck, Selser and Fenn sold or traded to the Source tribal artifacts from the Taos, Zia, Acoma and Santa Domingo Pueblos, court papers say. Other artifacts came from Hopi kivas, round structures built partly underground and used for spiritual ceremonies.

More than 20 tribes live on pueblos in the Southwest; all pueblos are reservations that include no private land. The pueblo tribes consider themselves the descendants of the people popularly known as Anasazi, who migrated away from their cultural center in New Mexico's Chaco Canyon between the 12th and 13th centuries after years of drought and famine.

Last fall, Selser invited Cavaliere and the Source into his home, where Hopi kachina masks were hanging on the walls. The affidavit alleges that Selser, who talked about buying objects Cavaliere got from the pueblos, said he sold artifacts at a Paris trade show and that Europeans "love this kind of material."

The court papers say Selser showed off a kachina mask he said he got from the Hopi Third Mesa -- which includes Old Oraibi, the oldest continuously inhabited village in the United States, existing since around A.D. 1050.

A Hopi consultant told federal authorities that all kachina masks are considered living gods and not items a tribal member would have been allowed to sell.

During one transaction, court papers say, the Source ran into an Arizona couple he used to deal with who sold him two Hopi bowls from the tribe's Second Mesa they had bought from Schenck.

The bowls had "kill holes" in them, ritual defacings made during burial ceremonies. The bowls still appear on Schenck's Web site, marked "sold."

http://www.sltrib.com/Utah/ci_13011842

Fed crackdown puts tribal artifact dealers on edge

by The Associated Press
SANTA FE, N.M. August 19, 2009, 12:56 pm ET

An intensifying federal investigation into the sale of Native American artifacts has brought fear and uncertainty to one of the nation's largest and longest-running Indian artifact shows.

Wealthy collectors are more cautious about buying artifacts for fear of criminal liability, and reputable dealers say they're working double-time to prove their legitimacy after being wrongly lumped together with looters and gravediggers.

The aisles of the exhibit hall at the 31st annual Whitehawk Antique Show were crowded with collectors, including business leaders and Santa Fe's elite. There were hugs and handshakes from the dealers for their regular customers, but rumors also were circulating about suspicious vans outside and undercover federal agents.

Amid grumbling about government meddling, the tension was evident.

"I think a lot of people are just scared because there's a lot of misconception about whether this stuff is legal or illegal," said Jeff Hammond, a private collector and dealer who was displaying prehistoric pots at the show.

Hundreds of prospective buyers crowded into the exhibit space Tuesday to get a look at the artifacts, from a rare Sikyatki polychrome jar to bead-adorned moccasins, silver jewelry, painted animal hides and woven baskets.

While there was talk about the beauty and rarity of some items, the buzz was all about the federal crackdown on the trafficking of relics in the Four Corners region, an area rich in prehistoric archaeological sites and artifacts.

A two-year undercover investigation became public in June, with raids on homes and businesses throughout the region. More than 20 people were arrested and indicted on allegations of taking the goods illegally. Twenty-five people face felony charges — two of them have committed suicide.

On Tuesday, a New Mexico man indicted in the case pleaded not guilty in federal court in Salt Lake City. David Waite, 61, of Albuquerque faces charges of trafficking, transporting stolen goods and theft for selling a cache of 24 knife points taken from federal lands in Utah.

On Wednesday, more than 20 government agents, archaeologists and curators descended on a home in Durango, Colo., to haul away a lifetime collection from 74-year-old Carl "Vern" Crites and his wife.

Authorities said the couple voluntarily turned over the collection, which one agent described as staggering. Court papers say items include ancient Anasazi prayer sticks, ivory beads and a ceremonial war club.

Crites was among those indicted on charges of trafficking, theft and grave desecration.

The dealers at the Santa Fe show, many of whom have been collecting and selling Indian artifacts for more than two decades, said they were concerned about their reputations because of a growing public perception that anyone involved in the trade could be involved with the criminal element that's being targeted by federal agents.

"Are there people doing bad things? Yes. And I'm sure the court system will give them what they deserve," said Walter Knox, a dealer who runs an upscale gallery in Scottsdale, Ariz. "But since this started, I'm still getting checked a lot, and it's getting kind of silly."

Every week, Knox said he has to run someone out of his gallery for trying to sell him stolen pots.

"I post my rules so people know I'm not going to deal with anything shady," said Knox, a retired police officer.

Knox shrugged off the concerns, saying the caliber of dealers at the show is such that they have nothing to worry about.

While they don't condone looting or the trafficking of illegal artifacts, many dealers said the federal government has been liberal in its interpretation of archaeological resource protection laws and heavy-handed in its effort to crack down.

Mac Grimmer, a Santa Fe dealer who has helped assemble many antique Indian art collections, said there have been crackdowns in the past and the market eventually settles down. But this could be different, he said.

While prehistoric artifacts are only a small percentage of the Indian art market, Grimmer said the perception that buying Indian artifacts in general could lead to jail time or a visit from federal agents has had a chilling effect.

"The part that nobody seems to understand is that there is a bigger contemporary Indian art market. If you continue to beat down on 'Indian art,' it's going to slop over onto that contemporary art and destroy this very lucrative and very large market that the American Indian population has built up," he said.

Grimmer and the other dealers said they go to great lengths to ensure that the artifacts they buy and sell have a legitimate history, including details on when and from where they were collected.

For Knox, many pots in his collections were acquired from museums or digs on private land.

One of Knox's clients has spent more than $1 million buying pottery and donating it to museums to build Indian collections. He said despite the picture federal investigators have painted of the trade, he and his fellow dealers are not camouflage-wearing felons who loot sites under the cover of darkness.

"We're the ones who love this stuff, who clean it and care for it," he said. "That's what people are doing, preserving history. And there's a right way and a wrong way to do it."

Hammond added that there's no reason to consider a shady deal or illegal activity when there are so many legitimate Indian artifacts on the market.

"If you really want to do this and not look over your shoulder and always have to watch your back and worry about things, you just need to stay on the right side," he said.

———

Whitehawk Antique Shows, http://whitehawkshows.com

Antique Tribal Art Dealers Association, http://www.atada.org

———

Associated Press reporter Paul Foy in Salt Lake City contributed to this story.


http://www.npr.org/templates/story/stor … =112013952

Prosecutors: Informant in artifacts case is clean

By Paul Foy and Mike Stark, Associated Press Writers
Story Published: Feb 5, 2010

SALT LAKE CITY – The undercover operative in a federal bust of artifact trading collected around $7,500 a month for secretly recording transactions with collectors and sellers across the Southwest for more than two years, new court papers say.

Ted Gardiner, a Utah antiquities dealer, got an initial $10,000 payment before the sting operation began in earnest, then collected regular monthly payments throughout 2007 and 2008, according to FBI disclosures in court files.

Gardiner is still being paid for helping agents prepare for nearly two dozen court cases, and he will receive more money if he testifies, according to papers in one of the cases. Gardiner had received $162,000 in payments plus expenses, for a total of $224,000, when most of the arrests were made in June.

The operative has no felony or misdemeanor convictions or charges pending against him nor immunity, said U.S. Attorney David Gaouette in Colorado, in papers filed in the case of Robert B. Knowlton, a former used car salesman caught up in the dragnet.

Gaouette disclosed a wealth of information on Gardiner, including a copy of his FBI contract. In Utah, lawyers representing 21 of the original 26 defendants have complained that authorities here have yet to give up the information.

Gaouette wrote in court papers that Gardiner had used drugs and abused alcohol in the past, but has nothing worse than minor traffic citations on his record. The FBI and U.S. Bureau of Land Management obtained his cooperation without any inducements other than payments, and without any threats, the U.S. attorney said.

Knowlton, 66, who ran a Web site from Grand Junction, Colo., called Bob’s Flint Shop, was accused of selling three items taken from federal land to Gardiner: A pipe, a Midland knife point and a Hell Gap knife. He has pleaded not guilty, and a trial is set for March 29.

Knowlton recounted for investigators how he got involved in the business – with a major setback. He made his first serious purchase in 1997 from a Colorado antique dealer.

“I spent probably close to $25,000 and they were all fakes, the whole bunch of them,” he said, according to an interview by Bureau of Land Management agents that was made part of his court record. He then sought an education in artifacts to avoid getting scammed again.

The federal investigation, one of the largest of its kind, peeled open the black market trade in artifacts taken from federal or tribal lands in the Four Corners region. The relics, some believed to be thousands of years old, can sell for thousands of dollars apiece. Federal authorities say they often end up in the homes of wealthy collectors in the Southwest and beyond.

Gardiner, who ran an artifacts business called Gardiner Antiquities, provided federal agents at the outset with all of his business records, access to his Web site and computers and a list of dealers and collectors, according to the court papers released last month. He spent $335,000 buying artifacts for the government, consulting the FBI before on how much to pay for each item.

Gardiner’s largest paychecks ended last summer, but the FBI has continued to pay him “small” amounts for his cooperation, the U.S. attorney in Denver said. When asked about it, the FBI in Salt Lake City refused to confirm Gardiner was still on the payroll.

Knowlton’s is the only case scheduled for a trial. Last week, lawyers in Utah told a federal magistrate that a handful of the defendants were expected to settle charges with plea bargains. Other defendants are fighting charges.

Two of the 26 defendants – one a Santa Fe, N.M., salesman, the other a prominent Blanding, Utah, physician, James Redd – committed suicide after their arrests.

Separately, Redd’s wife and daughter surrendered their own vast collections, pleaded guilty and were sentenced last summer to terms of probation. The rest of the defendants have pleaded not guilty.

http://www.indiancountrytoday.com/home/ … 41257.html

After Suicide, Evidence in Utah Artifacts Case In Jeopardy

By Andrew Ramonas | March 22, 2010 5:40 pm

The suicide of an undercover operative may give about two dozen defendants in a controversial American Indian artifacts case the chance to quash the primary evidence in the government’s case against them, The Salt Lake Tribune reported Sunday.

Ted Dan Gardiner shot himself earlier this month, becoming the third person connected with the cases to commit suicide. During a two-year probe, he recorded thousands of hours of undercover video of people who allegedly sold illegally obtained American Indian artifacts. Most of the defendants are from the Four Corners area of Utah near the borders of Colorado, New Mexico and Arizona.

But the Confrontation Clause of the Sixth Amendment, which gives criminal defendants the right to question witnesses, may put the video evidence in jeopardy.

“The premise of the Sixth Amendment is we have to subject the accuser to the crucible of cross-examination,” Kent Hart, executive director of the Utah Association of Criminal Defense Lawyers, told the newspaper. “This really is a hot issue in the law right now.”

Defendant Brandon Laws has filed a motion to throw out the video evidence, which is key to the government’s case. U.S. District Judge Ted Stewart is slated to hear arguments on his motion Thursday.

Prosecutors have said Gardiner’s suicide will not hold up the trials of the defendants who were charged after a government raid. The raid was sharply criticized by Utah officials, including the state’s senators.

More than 100 agents, including an FBI SWAT team, participated in the June 2009 roundup of people who allegedly plundered American Indian artifacts from public land. Although some agents reportedly had drawn guns, the raids were carried out without violence, except for one suspect who claimed his toe had been broken.

http://www.mainjustice.com/2010/03/22/a … -jeopardy/