ALLEN PASTRON
ARCHAEOLOGIST

“And what we saw originally was part of the skull was exposed, so as we started brushing, just brushing the dirt off the whole skeleton became visible. There were hundreds of shell beads around the next of this individual...”

 

KATHERINE PEREZ
MOST LIKELY DESCENDANT

“I couldn’t help but bend over and pick up some bone frag[ment]s, it was a jaw actually is what it was. I picked it up and I kind of dug a little hole and I put them down, and I covered them up, and I said, forgive me...”

 

“the likelihood is very high that in any of the large shell mounds, whatever you see on the surface is just a tip of the iceberg of what’s down below.”

 

 

JOHN FLORES
EMERYVILLE CITY MANAGER

“It was a fairly horrendous situation and no one who was a developer would want to be, would want to build along side it, so it was definitely a stigmata there that created an issue that needed to be addressed.”

 

ERIC HOHMANN
DEVELOPER

“And I am actually pretty proud with how we as a company dealt with this, and I am not sure that every firm out there would have acted in such a responsible manner.”

 

CHUCK STRIPLEN
OHLONE TRIBE

“Would you want a bunch of Indians coming around and digging up your ancestors, you know how would you feel if we dug up your grandma’s grave?”

 

ANDREW GALVAN
OHLONE TRIBE

“History repeats itself. It’s just a new people living there, and they are doing nothing different than what my ancestors did when they lived there, on top of the burials, because there are still burials down there...”

 

“There was one burial on site that really made us ponder: it was two adults buried together, side by side and intermingled, their limbs were intermingled. We found burials of adult women with fetuses, or with infants.”

 

HEATHER PRICE
ARCHAEOLOGIST

“I can just keep remembering the smells, the sights and it’s not...it’s not a place to live, it’s a burial ground, a contaminated one.”

 

 

“If there was ever an example of dancing on people’s graves, this was it.”