Bartlesville Examiner-Enterprise 19 September 1997
WASHINGTON (AP) Sen. Sam Brownback won the latest round in Kansas’ battle against an Oklahoma Indian tribe’s plans to build a bingo hall over an Indian burial ground in Kansas City, Kan. Brownback R-Kan., successfully amended a spending bill Wednesday to ensure the Huron Cemetery in Wyandotte County would be used solely as a cemetery. The Oklahoma Wyandottes last week announced plans to build a $4 million to $5 million parlor on pillars above burial plots.
“Recently there has been interest by tribes outside of Kansas in exhuming the graves in order to make way for casino development,” Brownback said. “I cannot imagine a more inappropriate, offensive or sacrilegious proposal.” On Tuesday, Kansas Gov. Bill Graves and three Kansas tribes went to federal court in Topeka to file a restraining order to halt the high-stakes bingo project. The Oklahoma tribe said it would respond in court. Oklahoma Wyandotte Chief Leaford Bearskin criticized Brownback’s “underhanded tactics.”
“Apparently the senator is of the old school that believes treaties with Indian tribes were made to be broken,” Bearskin said in a news release. Terms of the 1855 treaty, however, say the cemetery is to be “permanently reserved and appropriated for … a public burying-ground.” The tribe formally split in the same year, and twice during this century the Oklahoma branch has attempted to sell the cemetery for commercial development.
“These graves are our family, our ancestors and our loved ones,” said Jan English, a principal chief of Wyandot Nation of Kansas Inc. Last year, Graves was joined by five tribes in suing the Oklahoma Wyandottes and Interior Sccretary Bruce Babbitt.