hidden treasure

In Blanding, Utah an unorthadox crime is punished. 150 federal agents arrest 17 townspeople at gunpoint and are charged with trafficking in stolen artifacts and theft of artifacts on government and tribal lands. Arrested are individuals such as the town's founder decendent, a high school math teacher, a doctor and his family. An incident that ultimately ended in the doctor and a defendent from santa fe commiting suicide. Their ultimate demise started when they began to view grave digging of American Indian burial sites as a means of entertainment and money. Regarded as a harmless hobby throughout the town, thousands of artifacts were removed and added to collections, traded among friends or sold to private dealers. Blatant disregard of laws stating that these stolen artifacts are property of the tribe or the government.
The four corners is lush with Native American archeological finds, it's quite often you stumble over a burial site which are usually unearthy mounds of dirt. It is a crime that is easily commited by simply picking up a stray arrowhead lying in your path and taking it with you as a souvenior. It may seem like these people were injustly prosecuted and possibly targeted; according to the townspeople that remarked the federal agents as "stormtroopers." Local towns folk regard it as a unnessary act of punishment from the government and are angered from their loss of a local doctor.
One of the major tribes occupying the four corners is the Navajo tribe, the tribes' reservation is 3 times the size of Maryland. Obviously Navajo numbers matter in Arizona, they take a slap to the face with this incident. The local towns citizens are ignoring that the graves they dig up only for pots and other artifacts are not graves of a an extinct Native tribe but very much living tribe. In the tribe, deceased family members are not forgotten and especially their gravesite. When individuals desecrate their ancestor's resting place, it is more then an insult it's total disrespect.
The Navajo people revere death and individuals that have passed. They believe that if a grave is desecrated, a entity known in Navajo as chindi (sounded ghiii-di) or an English form of a ghost is guarding that grave and will posses that individual. Haunting them and bringing misfortune in their life eventually leading to their own death. This fact is why Navajos respect the resting place of their dead relatives and avoid any interaction with death such as morgues, cemetaries, or even the hospital because numerous people have died there.
The people of this town show high disrespect for the graves they dig up and the Indians that hold these areas sacred. It is also a huge loss to the field of archeology because every article they take, the less likely archeologists will find more history. It is not just a loss to Indigineous tribes of America but of society.