Man who died in 2014 left a home filled with Native artifacts and bones, likely grave-robbed; rightful owners still sought

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Thousands of Native American items, including the bones of about 500 people, were among the artifacts authorities removed from the home of a rural Indiana man who died in 2014 at 90. Don Miller of Waldron was known collecting souvenirs from his global travels, but many items appear to have been illegally obtained through grave robbing, Anna Werner reports for CBS News.

More than four years after Miller's death, FBI agents are still trying to return the items to their rightful owners. Holly Cusack-McVeigh, an archaeology professor from Indiana University-Purdue University Indianapolis, has been helping them. She calls the grave robbing a racist act: "We have to think about the context of, 'Who has been the target of grave robbing, for centuries?" Whose ancestors have been collected for hobby?" she told Werner. "This comes down to — racism. They aren't digging white graves."

Arikara tribal official Pete Coffey in North Dakota is working with the FBI to bring some of the remains back to tribal land. "They could very well be my own great, great, great, great grandfather, or grandmother, you know, that had been — I characterize it as being ripped out of the Earth, you know," Coffey told Werner.

Ky. man who robbed Indian graves gets 15 months in prison

A Southern Kentucky man who took artifacts from Native American grave sites has been sentenced to 15 months in prison, Bill Estep reports for the Lexington Herald-Leader.

The National Park Service and the Federal Bureau of Investigation began investigating 60-year-old Gary Womack of Franklin after a witness told authorities that Womack had invited him to look at artifacts he said he had taken from Mammoth Cave National Park and other places. An undercover agent, posing as a man who sold and traded Native American artifacts, met with Womack several times and bought items Womack said were from a burial mound in Posey County, Indiana. Womack also told the agent that he had found skeleton parts on several occasions while digging up Native American graves.

"Womack pleaded guilty to three felony violations of a federal law designed to protect archeological resources," Estep reports. Ben Barnes, second chief of the Shawnee Tribe in Miami, Okla., urged the judge to "impose a sentence that would deter people from desecrating graves." All the artifacts involved in the case have been recovered and will be returned to their tribes.