Arizona gets 33 months for stealing American Indian artifacts
Story-Date: 01:36 a.m. PST Tuesday  , March 17, 1998

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Arizona gets 33 months for stealing American Indian artifacts


By Tim Molloy
Associated Press Writer


PHOENIX (AP) -- A judge handed down a 33-month prison term to a former art
dealer convicted of stealing and trafficking in sacred American Indian
artifacts.

Rodney Tidwell, 54, was convicted in December on 20 felony counts of
stealing and selling Hopi robes, vestments and other liturgical items that
American Indian leaders said were filled with the "living breath" of the
creator. Prosecutors and Hopi leaders told the judge that many of the items
were priceless.

"They belonged to the whole tribe, and they surely are not for the
marketplace," Hopi Tribal Chairman Wayne Taylor Jr. said after Monday's
sentencing. He was one of abut 40 members of the tribe who sat through the
three-hour proceeding.

Tidwell, of Star Valley, near Payson in the Tonto National Forest northeast
of Phoenix, was convicted in Prescott for the theft and selling of the
cultural items. Prosecutors said he obtained and sold 11 Hopi ceremonial
items starting in 1995 and that he transported and sold other items owned
by an Acoma Pueblo tribal society, the Altar Society, in New Mexico.

He could have received a maximum of 5 years. Besides the prison time, he
must also pay fines of about $12,000, ruled U.S. District Court Judge Earl
Carroll.

Assistant U.S. Attorney Paul Charlton asked the judge to give Tidwell the
harshest sentence possible, arguing that he had a history of digging for
Indian ruins on U.S. Forest Service land.

And at a sentencing hearing earlier this month, American Indian leaders
told Carroll that Tidwell's crimes were especially severe because they
disrupted religious rituals.

Artifact traffickers who dig up ritual objects and sell them are violating
items filled with "living breath" granted to them by the creator, said
Vincent Toya, governor of Jemez Pueblo in New Mexico.

"Such desecration not only causes severe and devastating disruptment to our
ritual practices and cycle, it also results in immeasurable emotional
suffering," Toya testified.

Tidwell was convicted under the Archaeological Resources Protection Act as
well as the graves protection act.

The archaeological law makes it a crime to transport for sale or profit an
item of Native American cultural patrimony, which is an object having
"ongoing traditional, historical or cultural importance central to the
Native American group or culture, rather than property owned by an
individual."

Last month Tidwell also received six months in prison for violating his
probation in a 1995 New Mexico artifacts case. Tidwell had been convicted
of a misdemeanor for trafficking in Zuni and Hopi masks.



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