Ka Wai Ola - Office of Hawaiian Affairs, Volume 23, Number 4, 1 April 2006 — Arrest made in Kanupa Cave theft [ARTICLE]

Arrest made in Kanupa Cave theft

By Sterling Kini Wnng Publicatinns Editnr

On March 16, federal prosecutors charged a Kona man for trafficking Hawaiian cultural objects that he allegedly took from a Hawai'i island cave in June 2004. John Carta heeame the first person in the state to be charged with a violation of the federal Native American Grave Protection and Repatriation Act. If eonvicted, he could be fined or face up to a year in prison, or both. The criminal complaint also indicates that Carta was joined by an unnamed second man when he entered Kanupa Cave, located in South Kohala. As KWO went to print, the second man had not yet been charged.

The federal complaint states that Carta removed from the cave an unspecified number of Hawaiian cultural objects that he knew were repatriated there from a museum collection. The court document said that he "knowingly transport[ed] for sale and profit Native American cultural items obtained in violation" of federal law. Some of the objects later showed up on the hlaek market in August 2004. Nearly 150 years ago, missionary descendant Joseph Emerson collected about 40 cultural objects in a series of trips he made to Kanupa Cave. The items were later split up and sold to Bishop Museum and the Peabody Essex Museum in Salem, Mass. After gaining custody of the

objects through NAGPRA, members of Hui Mālama i nā Kūpuna o Hawai'i nei, Ka Lāhui Hawai'i and OHA - the legal owners of the collection under federal law - reburied them in the cave in 2003. Forbes Cave mediation extended In other burial-issue news, the court-ordered mediation in the Forbes Cave case was extended until March 31. U.S. District Judge David Ezra had originally set Feb. 24 as the deadline for the parties involved in the case to resolve their dispute over the disposition of the 83 cultural objects reburied in Forbes Cave, located in Kawaihae, Hawai'i island. No results of the mediation were announced prior to KWO' s press time. S

NŪ HOU • NEWS