WPKN 89.5 FM Local News:
The US Women's Open Golf Championship is being held this weekend at
the Sebonack Golf Course in the Shinnecock Hills area of Southampton.
Members of the Shinnecock and Unkechaug Indian Nations staged a protest Thursday on the main highway through Southampton, across from the Shinnecock Hills Golf Course.
They say their ancestors graves were desecrated for golf.
Rebecca Genia of the Shinnecock Indian Nation told WPKN News:
.
We are here today to bring awareness to the general public that the golf courses on which they play - Sebonack, Shinnecock Hills are on desecrated graves of our ancestors. Human remains have been dug up to play golf.
We still have 16 sets of human remains of our ancestors that need to be re-buried where they came from- in the Shinnecock Hills.
Harry Wallace, the elected chief of the Unkechaug Indian Nation is a member of the Inter-tribal Historic Preservation Taskforce.
Wallace said "Were here to support the Shinnecock in their protest against the use of burial grounds as a golf course to play in this tounament. It is well documented that the human remains were pushed aside so that they could construct a golf course here to play in the Shinnecock Hills.
Rebecca Genia says that the human remains were un-earthed in 1902 when the Shinnecock Hills course was built. They are stored in New York at the Museum of Natural History. She expects they will be returned soon.
Now that the Shinnecock tribe is recognized by the federal government pressure has been put on museums to return native remains and artifacts to the tribe.
Southampton Town still has no law regulating what happens when native remains are discovered. As a result, if graves were unearthed when the Sebonack course was built recently, Genia says “the tribe would have been the last to know”
