Utah town unsettled by doctor's suicide and an inquiry on Indian artifact looting

BLANDING, Utah — For 30 years Dr. James Redd was always on call to care for the Mormon and American Indian families that share the remote canyon lands in Southeastern Utah. Upon his death June 11, people mourned a man who provided not just medicine but a measure of common ground.

"I've been in his office when it was clear full of Native Americans," Robert Carroll, a 77-year-old Mormon, said after attending the funeral for Redd at a Mormon center in Blanding last week. "He took everybody."

The circumstances of Redd's death shocked the tidy town and threatened the delicate cross-cultural balance that he helped preserve. Redd, 60, was found dead of an apparent suicide a day after federal prosecutors charged him, his wife and 22 others with stealing, selling and trading Indian artifacts from the ancestral lands that stretch out from Blanding in every direction.

A second defendant, Steven Shrader of Santa Fe, N.M., was found dead Friday of two self-inflicted gunshot wounds behind an elementary school in DeKalb County, Ill., according to the authorities there.

Shrader, 56, had surrendered to law-enforcement officials in Albuquerque after being served a warrant in the case.

The events resonated in Blanding, the home of 16 of those charged and the site of a federal raid in the case.

Many defendants have surnames — Lyman, Shumway, Redd — that have been prominent since Mormon pioneers explored the area in the 1880s with plans to bring their education system to Indians.

Resentment of the federal government has long run deep here, for many reasons, but the arrests prompted a particularly sharp backlash.

Many whites say Blanding, which had been raided before, has been unfairly singled out in a region where universities and museums once paid residents to dig up artifacts.

Residents, including Carroll, grew up collecting objects as a hobby and still stumble upon arrowheads. (Carroll said he stopped collecting more than 30 years ago.) Many expressed outrage that residents were portrayed as "grave robbers."

Some said the government ginned up the trouble by sending an informant to pay cash for objects such as ancient clay vases, burial effigies and sandals.

"This is a special place," said Connie Swenson, a friend of one of the defendants, Harold Lyman, 78, a grandson of Blanding's founder.

"We do a lot of good for a lot of people, including the Indians, but we're just being crucified."

Blanding was the site of a raid in the 1980s, and in the 1990s, the Redds were charged in state court with stealing artifacts. They paid $10,000 to settle a related civil suit.

This time, said Bruce Adams, chairman of the San Juan County Commission, "Did the heavy-handedness of the federal government in making the arrest contribute to the death of a doctor? His wife told me they handcuffed him and shackled his legs. They were yelling and screaming at him that he was a liar, that he would never practice medicine again."

The Department of Justice portrayed the arrests as evidence of the Obama administration's commitment to justice for American Indians. Brett Tolman, the U.S. attorney for Utah, expressed sympathy for Redd and Shrader but said the arrests "went according to procedure."

"These are sacred artifacts that we should all care about," Tolman said. "Instead what we're talking about are the frustrations of those that are accused of these crimes. I think that is a tragedy."

While many Indians expressed sympathy for Redd and some questioned the arrests, others said they were upset that people they had known all their lives — including Redd, who delivered many of their children and cared for their parents — could be guilty of stealing what they consider sacred. Some said they suddenly felt like targets.

"I hear people whispering in the grocery store now, saying bad things about Native Americans," said Marrietta Scott, a Navajo who attended Redd's funeral. " 'It's all because of you.' They're blaming us."

Blanding, with a population of about 3,000, once thrived on ranching and uranium mining and bills itself as a "Base Camp to Adventure" into canyon country and the Four Corners area, where Arizona, Colorado, New Mexico and Utah meet. It is in San Juan County, the first county in Utah to elect an Indian to a county commission, in 1986.

Many Mormons characterized relations as peaceful, while several Indians said there could be tension. Aaron Keith, a Navajo, said, "There's a lot of prejudice."

Keith said he was saddened by Redd's death but glad the government had taken action. He said he had been struck by the complaints about the arrests.

"I don't see what they're complaining about with the handcuffs and everything," said Keith, 54. "That's what happens when you get arrested."

Karen Ann Cullotta contributed reporting from Chicago.