By Mar-Vic Cagurangan
Variety News Staff

A CULTURAL management company commissioned by Guam Okura Hotel to do an archeological survey on its project site has dropped its plan to ship the skeletal fragments of ancient remains off-island via the postal service, a move which was vehemently opposed by cultural activists.
“I understand the people’s reluctance in mailing human remains. It’s a sensitive issue,” said David DeFant, senior archeologist for the PHRI Western Pacific Division.
“We have agreed to consider the possibility of escorting the remains off-island, if that would make a difference. Instead of mailing them, they will be shipped through Continental and we will be on the flight while the remains are loaded and unloaded,” DeFant said in an interview with Variety.
The remains, the archeologist added, would be shipped back to Guam as soon as osteological analyses are completed. The remains will be re-buried at the same site where they were found, he added.
Not all of the 280 remains would be shipped out, DeFant said. They will be shipped in two batches, each with a set of 25 skeletal fragments. The second batch won’t be sent out until the first batch is returned to Guam, DeFant said.
In PHRI’s initial plan, the skeletal fragments would be packed in bubble wrap like regular postal packages, put in a plastic container and sent as registered mail through the U.S. Postal Service.
“That was our initial proposal but we have abandoned that,” DeFant said, adding that PHRI wants to avoid further controversy surrounding the 280 ancient remains that were excavated from the Okura Hotel’s beach property where a $30 million development project is being planned.
If there are still objections to PHRI’s new plan to escort the remains on the plane, then the company will look for a way to have the remains analyzed on island, DeFant said.
Former Sen. Hope Cristobal, president of the Coalition for the Protection of Ancient Cemeteries, has asked the Guam Preservation Review Board to put a stop to further digging at the site and abort the plan to mail the ancient remains.
The Historic Preservation Office’s existing procedures require that osteological analyses be conducted on Guam.
Lynda Aguon, of the state historic preservation office, however, approved PHRI’s request to allow off-island shipment of the remains due to the absence of a contract osteologist on island.
“In an effort to make this process less burdensome to all concerned parties, and to shorten the time between burial removal and reinterment, we have decided to permit the analyses to be done off-island,” Aguon stated in a letter to DeFant.
DeFant said employing the regular postal service to send human remains off-island was done by one archeological company in the past. “I wasn’t aware that there was any objection when this firm mailed human skulls,” DeFant said.
He said shipping human remains off-island for archeological and osteological evaluations has been the most feasible option since Guam lost its osteologist in the 1990s.
Presently, DeFant said, Guam doesn’t have an osteologist other than University of Guam professor Dr. Gary Heathcote. “He’s very interested in doing the analysis but can’t because he’s too busy,” DeFant said.
The Historic Preservation Office has only one resident archeologist, Vic April, who is “handling a mind-boggling amount of work,” DeFant noted.
“Things have changed since the 1990s. It is only recently that we considered off-island analysis,” he said.
Over the years, more than a thousand ancient skeletons had been found at different development sites in Tumon Bay. Many of them have been reburied and their burial sites are marked with monuments. Others are still awaiting reinterment, DeFant said.
In response to criticisms from cultural activists, PHRI issued a press statement, seeking to clarify the “misrepresentations” that it said have been made about the archeological activity at Okura property.
“Our treatment of the ancestral remains has precisely followed both Guam law and the requirements of the Guam Historical Resources Division. Since the commencement of archeological data recovery and monitoring investigations in August 2006, PHRI has kept both Okura and Guam Historic Preservation Division apprised of our discoveries,” the press statement read.
“Ms. Cristobal characterizes our attempts to rescue the ancestral remains from destruction by the bulldozers as a form of desecration. We assume this would also apply to our efforts to learn as much as possible about who these people were and what they can tell us about Guam’s history,” PHRI added.