The following appeared in the INROOTS-L list today and may be of interest
to some who live near Indianapolis.
Several members of the Indiana Pioneer Cemeteries Restoration Project
(INPCRP) appeared Wednesday afternoon (1/27/99) to testify before the
Senate
Committee on Governmental and Regulatory Affairs, which was
discussing two
cemetery bills (SB 178 and 280).
There will be a hearing before the House of Representatives'
Committee on
Agriculture, Natural Resources and Rural Development on:
Monday, February 1, 1999 at 3:30 P.M.
in the House Chambers
(third floor of the State House; east side)
Additional seating is available in the gallery, accessible from the
fourth
floor.
The House is considering SIX very important cemetery bills, the
details of
which and links to the various sponsoring legislators and the full
text of
the bills can be found on the INPCRP website under "Pending
Legislation" at:
http://www.rootsweb.com/~inpcrp
If ANY of you are in the Indianapolis area or can be in Indianapolis
on
Monday afternoon, we would dearly love for you to join us there.
Since the
meeting will be in the House Chambers, they should be able to
accommodate a
large turnout. (There were about 40 people crammed into the
Committee room
on Wednesday, though a number of them were present regarding other
bills.)
This is a unique opportunity to see our goverment in action and a
chance for
our voices to be heard by the men and women who make our laws.
In my honest opinion, I don't think the Legislators are getting the
big
picture here. I don't think they are in touch with the desperate
reality of
this situation and it's only by showing up in numbers that they
are
going to
realize that large numbers of potential voters are watching what
happens in
the State House this year.
Indiana's pioneer family cemeteries (which by some estimates account
for 75
to 90 percent or more of all the burial grounds in the state) have
little or
no laws to protect them. Property owners are permitted to abuse,
neglect
and obliterate these sites pretty much with abandon. There is only
minimal
enforcement of the laws that DO exist.
Most of the proposed bills will have impact only on cemeteries on
"public"
property -- sites owned or controlled by the state, the counties, the
townships and the cities and towns. One bill (HB 1522) will govern
how and
under what circumstances our ancestors and predecessors' remains
will
be
disinterred and reinterred when the real estate upon which they are
buried
becomes "ripe for development".
The real estate developers in this state consider pioneer cemeteries
an
impediment and an encumbrance. I can guarantee you that, in years to
come,
you will at some point learn that a cemetery to which you feel some
bond
will be subject to relocation. How that takes place and what happens
to
those human remains, if it must happen, is of tremendous importance
to
family historians, genealogists and right-thinking people everywhere.
Today, if a property owner wants to move a known cemetery on his/her
property or if human remains are found in an unknown cemetery is
found
during construction, there is almost a 100% chance that those remains
will
be excavated and then warehoused in a university archeology
laboratory where
they will be housed INDEFINITELY for "archeological
research".
It's happened on three occasions in the past two years that we know
of
today. We're sure it's happened more often that that, but
these
things are
usually kept hush-hush because they don't want to "offend
our
sensibilities". The 35 children and 8 adults that were exhumed two
years
ago in Indianapolis to make way for the construction of a warehouse
are
STILL on deposit in a laboratory in Indianapolis and there is
apparently no
timetable for their reinterment. It happened last summer in Dubois
County
and it happened again last December in Shelby County.
Read the bills yourself. They are all linked from the INPCRP Pending
Legislation pages. Make up your own minds about them. Contact your
legislators and tell them your opinion. Come to the hearing on
Monday in
Indianapolis if you can and stand up and tell your
Representatives'
what you
know and what you believe about the desperate state of the vast
majority of
Indiana's pioneer cemeteries.
Lois Mauk
INPCRP State Coordinator
Dr J A Ballard <john.ballard(a)anu.edu.au>
Graduate School, Australian National University, Canberra ACT 0200, Australia
Tel +61 2 6249 5487 Fax +61 2 6249 4829