Several members of the Indiana Pioneer Cemeteries Restoration Project (INPCRP) appeared Wednesday afternoon (1/27/99) to testify before the Senate Committee on Governmental and Regulatory Affairs, which was discussing two cemetery bills (SB 178 and 280). There will be a hearing before the House of Representatives' Committee on Agriculture, Natural Resources and Rural Development on: Monday, February 1, 1999 at 3:30 P.M. in the House Chambers (third floor of the State House; east side) Additional seating is available in the gallery, accessible from the fourth floor. The House is considering SIX very important cemetery bills, the details of which and links to the various sponsoring legislators and the full text of the bills can be found on the INPCRP website under "Pending Legislation" at: http://www.rootsweb.com/~inpcrp If ANY of you are in the Indianapolis area or can be in Indianapolis on Monday afternoon, we would dearly love for you to join us there. Since the meeting will be in the House Chambers, they should be able to accommodate a large turnout. (There were about 40 people crammed into the Committee room on Wednesday, though a number of them were present regarding other bills.) This is a unique opportunity to see our goverment in action and a chance for our voices to be heard by the men and women who make our laws. In my honest opinion, I don't think the Legislators are getting the big picture here. I don't think they are in touch with the desperate reality of this situation and it's only by showing up in numbers that they are going to realize that large numbers of potential voters are watching what happens in the State House this year. Indiana's pioneer family cemeteries (which by some estimates account for 75 to 90 percent or more of all the burial grounds in the state) have little or no laws to protect them. Property owners are permitted to abuse, neglect and obliterate these sites pretty much with abandon. There is only minimal enforcement of the laws that DO exist. Most of the proposed bills will have impact only on cemeteries on "public" property -- sites owned or controlled by the state, the counties, the townships and the cities and towns. One bill (HB 1522) will govern how and under what circumstances our ancestors and predecessors' remains will be disinterred and reinterred when the real estate upon which they are buried becomes "ripe for development". The real estate developers in this state consider pioneer cemeteries an impediment and an encumbrance. I can guarantee you that, in years to come, you will at some point learn that a cemetery to which you feel some bond will be subject to relocation. How that takes place and what happens to those human remains, if it must happen, is of tremendous importance to family historians, genealogists and right-thinking people everywhere. Today, if a property owner wants to move a known cemetery on his/her property or if human remains are found in an unknown cemetery is found during construction, there is almost a 100% chance that those remains will be excavated and then warehoused in a university archeology laboratory where they will be housed INDEFINITELY for "archeological research". It's happened on three occasions in the past two years that we know of today. We're sure it's happened more often that that, but these things are usually kept hush-hush because they don't want to "offend our sensibilities". The 35 children and 8 adults that were exhumed two years ago in Indianapolis to make way for the construction of a warehouse are STILL on deposit in a laboratory in Indianapolis and there is apparently no timetable for their reinterment. It happened last summer in Dubois County and it happened again last December in Shelby County. Read the bills yourself. They are all linked from the INPCRP Pending Legislation pages. Make up your own minds about them. Contact your legislators and tell them your opinion. Come to the hearing on Monday in Indianapolis if you can and stand up and tell your Representatives' what you know and what you believe about the desperate state of the vast majority of Indiana's pioneer cemeteries. Lois Mauk INPCRP State Coordinator