Wal-Mart Builds on a Native American Burial Ground….again

On June 20th, the Wintu tribe—whose land encompasses parts of Northern California—dedicated an 8 foot bronze statue to memorialize the site of a sacred burial ground. Too bad this statue rests in a Wal-Mart parking lot.

After discovering the burial ground during the construction of a supercenter, Wal-Mart did the right thing and stopped construction kept building the store and made concessions to the local Native American tribe --- in the form of a $60,000 bronze statue dedicated to a traditional Wintu feather dancer. While a nice gesture, local tribal leaders agreed the land should never have been used for commercial purposes.

Of course, this isn’t the first time Wal-Mart disrespected a Native American burial site; or for that matter, an area of historical significance.  .

Wal-Mart construction unearths 64 Native remains in Hawaii.  During the construction of a Sam’s Club and Wal-Mart supercenter in Hawaii, workers found 64 sets of remains.  In 2007, three years after being unearthed, the remains still sat locked up in a trailer under a parking ramp, awaiting reburial. [AP via Fox News, 5/23/07]

...in Georgia and California…

In 1996, Wal-Mart sought to build a new store on a sacred Mohican site, but abandoned the project after four years of court battles. In 1995, JDN engineered a deal in Canton, GA to relocate numerous graves and set up a permanent display of Indian artifacts inside the Wal-Mart, right next to the layaway counter. In 1992, Wal-Mart redesigned a store in Paso Robles, CA so a plaque at one end of a parking lot marked a grassy knoll where Native American graves were left undisturbed. [New York Times, 8/3/97]

...and even in Mexico

Wal-Mart supercenter intrudes on ancient Aztec ruins and destroys farmland. When Wal-Mart decided to place a store in an area of San Juan Teotihuacán, a mere one and half miles from Aztec ruins, some Mexican citizens staged a hunger strike in protest of destroying Mexico’s “indigenous heritage.” Not only did the Wal-Mart store destroy the “cultural heritage” of the land, it destroyed “alfalfa and cornfields” which were “razed to make way” for the big box store. [Newsday, 11/7/04]

To read more about this issue, please check out our Native American fact sheet

Posted by Research Team on Monday, June 22, 2009