Background[edit]
In 1979, the case was initiated after a housing development in Stockton, California, began bulldozing a Miwok burial ground, unearthing the ancestral remains of two hundred people.[1] The site had at once contained the remains of over 600 people.[3] As the number of people unearthed grew, Wana the Bear, a descendant of the people attempted to stop the mass grave desecration and removal by citing California's 1854 statute on cemeteries, which protected places where "six or more human bodies buried in one place constitute a cemetery."[1]
The issue of the case was whether this 1854 law applied to the burial grounds of Native Americans.[1]
Later developments[edit]
In 1990, U.S. Congress passed the Native American Graves Protection and Repatriation Act, which, in theory, effectively ended this double standard that Wana the Bear v. Community Construction upheld, although the burden of proof to demonstrate connection still falls on native people, which is often difficult when sites have already been desecrated and artifacts have been removed or stolen.[3]
In California, Assembly Bill 275: Cultural Preservation (AB 275) was passed in 2020 that attempted to extend protections to some non-federally recognized tribes.[4] This development was received controversially by some tribes, some of whom argued that it perpetuated genocide.[5]