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Former Effigy Mounds National Monument Superintendent Sentenced To Jail Time

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Marching Bear Group of Mounds at Effigy Mounds National Monument/NPS

A former superintendent of Effigy Mounds National Monument faces jail time and must make nearly $109,000 in restitution for removing skeletal remains from the monument's museum collection/NPS, Marching Bear Group of mounds at Effigy Mounds National Monument

A former superintendent of Effigy Mounds National Monument who admitted taking skeletal remains of Native Americans from the monument two decades ago so they couldn't be repatriated with tribes must serve 10 weekends in jail and a year of home detention, pay a $3,000 fine, and make restitution in the amount of nearly $109,000.

The sentence was handed down to Thomas A. Munson, 76, by U.S. District Court Chief Magistrate Judge Jon S. Scoles on Friday.

"It is a very sad day when a public official betrays the public's trust," said Kevin W. Techau, U.S. Attorney for the Northern District of Iowa. "This was a serious crime and the betrayal was compounded by a violation of the most sacred trust placed in Mr. Munson as the superintendent of Effigy Mounds National Monument."

Mr. Munson agreed to a plea agreement back in January. According to a release from the U.S. Attorney's Office, evidence presented at that court appearance and his sentencing hearing "revealed that sometime in July of 1990, Munson decided to illegitimately take possession of items in the museum collections in an effort to avert the mandates of the then pending Native American Graves Protection and Repatriation Act, which he thought was 'bad law.'

"The law allowed—in Munson’s opinion—modern day Native American Tribes to inaccurately and unscientifically affiliate themselves with prehistoric human remains and funerary objects," the release added. "To thwart the law and to save him personally the effort of complying with it, Munson decided to remove skeletal prehistoric human remains from the museum collection in an attempt to maintain possession of any associated funerary objects that might otherwise follow the human remains back to a tribe."

As part of his plea agreement, Mr. Munson wrote a public apology to the tribes that have connections to the monument's grounds.

"I deeply regret and I am unilaterally sorry for the events surrounding the misappropriation of Native American human remains by me. I apologize wholeheartedly," he wrote. "While I inappropriately stored these human remains in my garage, in garbage bags inside cardboard boxes without temperature, humidity, or other environmental controls, for years, please understand that I did nothing else to deliberately harm them."

Current Effigy Mounds Superintendent James Nepstad said the National Park Service would work with the tribes to repatriate the remains of 41 Native Americans (i.e., approximately 2,135 whole and fragmentary human remains) that had been part of the monument's museum collections.

According to the U.S. Attorney's Office, the majority of these skeletal remains was originally removed from archeological sites within the national monument and organized by catalog and accession numbers within the collection drawers of the museum curatorial storage facility.

"Mr. Munson’s crime violated the trust of the American Indians in particular, the public, and the National Park Service, and the agency he served," Superintendent Nepstad said in a prepared statement. "Munson’s illegal actions prevented us from repatriating these human remains for over 20 years. Despite his obstruction of our investigation, we found and recovered these human remains and are committed to working with our tribal partners to repatriate them as quickly and respectfully as possible.

"Additionally, we are continuing to establish safeguards at Effigy Mounds to protect sacred remains in accord with the Native American Graves Protection and Repatriation Act. We thank the Department of Justice for investigating this case with us, and bringing resolution to it.”

The landscape within Effigy Mounds National Monument is "considered sacred by many Americans, especially the Monument's 20 culturally associated American Indian tribes," according to the Park Service. "The 200-plus American Indian mounds are located in one of the most picturesque sections of the Upper Mississippi River Valley."

Tribes that affiliate themselves with Effigy Mounds National Monument are:

* Crow Creek Sioux Tribe

* Flandeau Santee Sioux

* Ho-Chunk Nation

* Iowa Tribe of Kansas & Nebraska

* Iowa Tribe of Oklahoma

* Lower Sioux Indian Community

* Omaha Nation

* Otoe-Missouria Tribe

* Ponca Tribe of Nebraska

* Prairie Island Indian Community

* Sac and Fox Nation of Missouri in Kansas and Nebraska

* Sac and Fox Nation of Oklahoma

* Sac and Fox Tribe of the Mississippi in Iowa

* Santee Sioux Nation

* Shakopee Mdewakanton Sioux Community of Minnesota

* Sisseton Wahpeton Oyate Tribe

* Standing Rock Sioux Tribe

* Upper Sioux Indian Community

* Winnebago Tribe of Nebraska 

* Yankton Sioux Tribe

Comments

His actions were absolutely outrageous, and he got off very lightly.


Poor old fella, it could have happened to any of us.

He was just taking a short cut to save some time and work for everyone i in relocating scone old bones that no-one even, knew who they belonged to anyway.

A little strange him keeping the bones in bags  in his garage tho. Creepy. Maybe he was afraid to bury them in his own backyard, as they might have haunted him for the rest of his days?

Anyway, all's well that ends well.  I wonder how they came up with the $109K penalty? Hope none of the Indian bosses ends up pocketing some of that when no-one is looking. 

And I'm sure Mr Munson learned an expen$ive lesson; He'd better not do it again or his fine will really go up! And at his age, he'll be needing all his retirement for his elderly years...


If any one of us were to do anything remotely similar, we would go to federal prison for eternity.  Good ole double standard for the NPS management.  Feds taking care of feds.


I actually think his sentence is pretty fair. He's still being punished, but at less expense to tax payers than if he did real time in jail. 


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