Church repatriates sacred rock covered with petroglyphs after 14-year effort

TREMONTON, Utah (AP) — A large rock bearing petroglyphs created more than 1,000 years ago by the ancestors of the Northwestern Band of the Shoshone Nation is finally back home in the mountains of northern Utah.

The repatriation effort, which began in 2011, culminated earlier this month when the sacred rock was airlifted to its original location after being freed from a concrete slab in front of a church meetinghouse in the community of Tremonton, about 80 miles (129 kilometers) north of Salt Lake City.

The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints said in a statement Wednesday that historians and conservators working on its behalf partnered with the tribe and the state to carefully remove and clean the 2,500-pound (1,134-kilogram) rock. The process involved saws, chisels and eventually soap and water to remove years of lichen growth from the petroglyphs.

For Brad Parry, the tribe’s vice chair, it was emotional seeing the rock returned to the rugged hillside to rejoin other petroglyph-covered rocks. He said it's a spiritual place where Shoshone ancestors would gather to camp and hunt.

Parry said the repatriation was like putting a puzzle piece in place.

“Our history is so fractured with a lot of things that happened to us,” he said in a statement. “To have these positive things now that are coming out — it’s rebuilding our history. And I can’t overstate that.”

People give different versions of how the rock found its way to the church meetinghouse some 80 years ago. Stories involve a group of people muscling the hefty rock into a pickup and hauling it to town.

It's a mystery why it was brought to the church, said Ryan Saltzgiver, history sites curator for the Church History Department. For decades, it sat outside the building, first near the flagpole and then on the north side. Grainy black and white photos shared by the church showed the rock on display.

David Bolingbroke, research and outreach historian for the Church History Department, said the rock was likely placed at the chapel not out of malice, but out of a lack of proper understanding.

In 2011, amateur archaeologists used a 1937 rock-art survey to identify and track down the rock's origin.

“We’ve been working since about that time on getting everything to line up so we could move the stone,” Saltzgiver said.

The Utah State Historic Preservation Office helped bring partners together, and the church worked with the tribe to finalize a preservation and repatriation plan. Saltzgiver said the church has a moral and ethical obligation to care for things that are in its possession as well as a responsibility to return sacred items to their rightful owners.

Once the rock was removed from its concrete base, it was taken to Provo where conservators with the Midwest Art Conservation Center used bamboo and plastic tools to remove the lichen without altering the original patina.

After trucking the rock to a spot near the Utah-Idaho line, a helicopter was used to move it into place. Officials did not disclose the exact location to ensure its safekeeping.

To mark the return, tribal spiritual leader Rios Pacheco offered a blessing in Shoshoni, the language spoken by the tribe.

“This rock was meant to be here,” Parry said. “It’s like this rock knows it’s home.”

South Dakota hotel owner found liable for discrimination against Native Americans

SIOUX FALLS, S.D. (AP) — The owner of a South Dakota hotel who said Native Americans were banned from the establishment was found liable for discrimination against Native Americans on December 19.

A federal jury decided the owner of the Grand Gateway Hotel in Rapid City will pay tens of thousands of dollars in damages to various plaintiffs who were denied service at the hotel. The jury awarded $1 to the NDN Collective, the Indigenous advocacy group that filed the lawsuit.

The group brought the class-action civil rights lawsuit against Retsel Corporation, the company that owns the hotel, in 2022. The case was delayed when the company filed for bankruptcy in September 2024. The head of the company, Connie Uhre, passed away this September.

“This was never about money. We sued for one dollar," said Wizipan Garriott, president of NDN Collective and an enrolled member of the Rosebud Sioux Tribe. "It was about being on record for the discrimination that happened, and using this as an opportunity to be able to really call out racism.”

Uhre posted on social media in March 2022 that she would ban Native Americans from the property after a fatal shooting at the hotel involving two teenagers whom police identified as Native American. She wrote in a Facebook post that she cannot “allow a Native American to enter our business including Cheers,” the hotel's bar and casino.

When Native American members of the NDN Collective tried to book a room at the hotel after her social media posts, they were turned away. The incident drew protests in Rapid City and condemnation from the mayor as well as tribes in the state.

In Friday's decision, the jury also ruled in Retsel's countersuit against NDN Collective that the group had acted as a nuisance in its protests against the hotel, awarding $812 to the company.

Following a consent decree with the U.S. Justice Department in November 2023, Uhre had to publicly apologize and was banned from managing the establishment for four years.

The Associated Press reached out to the defense attorneys for comment.

Rapid City, a gateway to Mount Rushmore, has long seen racial tensions. At least 8% of the city's population of about 80,000 identifies as American Indian or Alaska Native, according to census data.