>> Announcer: The following is a production of WLRN Public Television.

>> Rupp: The money that's pouring into Miami right now is changing the landscape in ways I don't think that we ever thought possible.

>> Pestle: Development in Miami has, you know, sort of gone in fits and spurts.

That area around the mouth of the river has changed in terms of character.

>> Wickman: I firmly believe that there is a continuity between the ancient peoples and the peoples who have survived into the modern day.

>> Osceola: Everyone's ancestors have the right to be protected.

We never put our loved ones to rest for it to be exploited later on.

Hello, how are you this morning?

Many of you all know who I am.

Betty Osceola.

And I'm here as representing myself and as a part of my clan.

The tribe on their own officially can have their words, but here, I'm here to speak on behalf of the ancestors, because somebody has to stand up.

[ Drums beating ] [ Horn blows ] What we're going to do today in this prayer walk is we're going to walk towards the Miami Circle, and we're going to make our way up the steps in front of where The Capital Grille is.

100 years from now, these buildings aren't going to mean anything but what's in the ground that exists, all that history that is there has the right to continue in the place where it existed.

There's this movement now for a systematic erasure of history.

And a lot of young people don't know the history of different civilizations or their own history.

You have to know where you came from to know where you're going.

There's a better way that this could be done.

♪♪ Bones are bones.

Graves are graves.

Archaeologists have their place.

But I just can't understand the fascination of studying other people's bones.

It's against my culture.

♪♪ >> Pestle: The area around the mouth of the Miami River was a significant archaeological site, is a significant archaeological site, has been known since at least the 1950s.

There's work going back that's well documented at the county level and at the state level, of incredible findings on both the north and south banks of the Miami River, going well inland from what would have been the ancient mouth of the river.

What might have been single-family homes or low to mid rise buildings have been replaced by these towering glass and steel kind of skyscrapers.

What that has meant is, as these buildings go up, their foundations need to go down.

And so as these more modest buildings were removed over the last 25 years or so, more and more of the Tequesta site, and this was the name that was given to the site and the people that lived there, anywhere from, let's say, 2,000 years ago up until and actually after the arrival of Spanish colonial forces.

So in the '90s, you had the Miami Circle.

This was incredibly significant because nobody had seen indigenous architecture preserved in this way in South Florida.

Subsequent excavation, it was preserved.

After that, you had findings on the north bank of the Miami River at a series of developments that fell under the title of the Met Square, and this included a large cemetery that was excavated in the early 2000 belonging to this Tequesta site, and then later a whole additional constellation of circles at the Met Square site.

The Miami Circle was just the first, it turns out, of numerous examples of circular architecture.

And then most recently we have what's going on on the south bank of the river now, just to the west of the circle, which is this current development being done by the Related Group that shows that there was an incredible density of human activity on the south side of the river, hundreds and even thousands of feet inland from the mouth and from the bay.

And so, unfortunately, in most instances, development has won out over preservation in terms of sort of our long term approach to understanding, appreciating, and sort of curating and protecting these sites.

And so we're really at an unfortunate inflection point right now where the sites that are currently under development may be some of our last windows into the past.

♪♪ ♪♪ >> Carr: The Miami Circle was important because at that time it was unique.

Nothing like that had ever been found.

The idea of creating evidence or seeing evidence of a structure that was characterized by holes cut into the bedrock.

>> Man: Bring back memories.

>> Carr: Yeah, yeah.

>> Man: Do you know those people?

>> Carr: Well, they probably all work for me.

I can't recognize them easily.

That's something that was unknown, and a lot of people made a lot more out of it than they should have.

You know, people called it the Miami Stonehenge.

There was a lot of following in England and in Europe with the discovery.

The importance of that site can't be understated.

It's a national landmark, and the limited excavation that was done largely just on the circle itself, indicated this was a major structure, either of the chief, the cacique, or it was a council house or some kind of very special place.

There were sacrificial animals within the building, within the -- where the structure was.

This was unusual.

>> Man #1: We've always known the land where the river joins the bay was home to the Tequesta Indian tribe.

Archaeologists have found the usual arrowheads and musket balls, but they've never found something like this.

Look down from Sky 10 and you can see what has the experts puzzled.

It is a nearly perfect circle of holes, some large, some small, carved into the limestone bedrock.

>> Man #2: And then the hole itself is cut somewhat of an eye shape.

>> Man #1: The larger ones are lined up on the four points of the compass.

The one to the south has a rock set upright in the center.

The one to the east also has a rock.

The mystery of the circle in the rock may never be solved because time is running out.

A company called Brickell Limited owns the land and is planning to put up a condo soon.

In fact, the bulldozers could come any day now and the secret of the circle would be lost, leaving this Tequesta on a nearby bridge the only reminder of what once was.

>> Carr: Growing up, I was always interested in history, and as a boy, it was a great adventure, exploring and finding out everything I could about my environment, and Miami was -- was the same.

I lived within a mile of the mouth of the Miami River, and I was always exploring the river.

I was a little bit of a river rat, me and my friends and we were there looking and curious, picking up rocks, turning things over.

>> For example, this is from -- >> Carr: And it was also in the seventh grade when I encountered a boy named Mark Green, who became a lifelong friend.

>> It's amazing what's here.

>> Carr: Who actually came in for show and tell, and he had a cigar box filled with artifacts.

He had pieces of pottery and had this beautiful little stone axe type of stone that would never occur in Florida.

And I said, "Where did you find those?"

He said, "Well, I'm not going to tell you.

It's -- it's my secret site."

So I surrendered about three days worth of lunch money and eventually convinced him that it was time to see this place.

And it turned out it was located on the south bank of the Miami River.

Ironically, at the very place I'm working now at 444 Brickell is the -- is the place that we visited back in what would have been 1961 or 1962, when it was just a vacant field and used as a YMCA ball field.

And that experience of having a place where artifacts occurred had a huge impact on me, realizing that there was a palpable past, that something that could be looked at and studied.

>> Osceola: So I think it's three towers for residential units that they plan to build on the sacred indigenous site and to go into museums.

So that's why we're advocating for this site to be protected, and for the ancestors to stay in the ground where they were meant to be.

You know, this developer, I understand purchased this property a number of years back, and there was already development on the property.

And our stance is just because development was allowed years ago and there was that train of thought that it was okay, it wasn't okay, and it's still not okay.

And Florida has this history of developing over sacred sites to not only the indigenous people, but other people of marginalized communities.

So I would like to make a circle, however we can make it.

We might have to put this -- I'm looking here.

We might have to put this crease in the middle of our circle.

There's a way that we can make a circle.

>> Woman: What would you like to see happen to the site?

How would you like to see it?

>> Osceola: You know, this site needs to be preserved.

There doesn't need to be any building.

Just like the Miami Circle was preserved and promises were made that they were going to do something more for the area, but they haven't.

Miami has something that nowhere else in the world has.

If they're looking for tourism dollars and more money into their economy, why aren't they actually trying to get these sites out to the world that, hey, look what we have.

>> Creator, that I ask that you help us and guide us to show us that path of what we need to do.

I ask that you help and guide us, to open their minds and heart to the error of what is being done.

♪♪ >> Hammer: [Indistinct] Step this way for the big swindle.

Ladies and gentlemen, before proceeding with the main business of the day, which is the selling of these lots at any price, we are going to have a little entertainment.

>> Keddell: I think Miami is summed up best by "Coconuts", which is a film made by the Marx Brothers, where Groucho is selling sand and palm trees.

>> Hammer: Florida, folks.

Sunshine, sunshine, perpetual sunshine all the year round.

Let's get the auction started before we get a tornado.

>> Keddell: And somehow I think that's the same game.

It's the same comedy.

It's almost a joke, really, if it wasn't, to me, serious, because I think people are growing up here with an ignorance of where they come from.

>> Hammer: 800 wonderful residences will be built right here.

Why, they're as good as or better.

You can have any kind of a home you want to.

You can even get stucco.

Oh, how you can get stucco.

>> Miyar: Down in South Florida, particularly along the Miami River, I mean, right now it is a very -- it's a prime destination to live now.

And it was a prime destination to live back in the day.

And there's just sites all throughout the Miami River and very, very special sites that you really don't see anywhere else in the world.

>> Rupp: The way Miami is evolving right now is, obviously, it's horrifying for some people and some neighborhoods, because for me, it drives me crazy that our really diverse neighborhoods -- Little Havana, Little Haiti, Little San Juan, Little Bahamas in West Coconut Grove -- can easily be eradicated.

And that's because of the amazing increase in property values, especially in Miami, with what drew people here.

Right?

It was the weather.

It was the environment.

It was the water.

It was the trees, the flowers, the fruit, the mangoes.

So I think when you look at heritage, you have to look at all of those facets together because it's that blend that I think, to me, makes Miami what it is.

>> Wickman: Every piece of land on the face of this planet has history, as long as it's had humans on it.

If it had animals on it and no humans, it still has a history.

The question is how much value does it have to the people who are living on it now, and what value do they see?

How do they see that value as relating to their lives to this day, to this minute?

And Florida, because it has so much history, European history, indigenous history, because it has so much remaining value today, because it has so much potential for the future, has a particular push pull, a particular tension between care and understanding, and utilizing federal and state regulations for protection of Florida's past.

And those people who just want to deal with Florida's future and come here or stay here because they see the opportunity to make money.

♪♪ >> Carr: They always say Miami is one high rise short.

But the truth is the urban scape is so full and so extensive that putting a value on -- on green space is really important when and where it's possible.

It doesn't mean that it's a taking.

It means it's a matter of negotiating and identifying.

And what's missing in Miami is there are plans for developing.

There's plans for long term development in zoning.

Someone needs to create the plan for what is going to be identified for preservation.

That's really important.

No one's done that.

It needs to be done in an institutionalized way, as opposed to just reacting to the next permit that comes.

If you're going to react to a permit, well, what are you going to do in succeeding on any level?

It's just not practical.

>> Pestle: Property rights have trumped everything in Florida.

They do currently in state law.

So it's an incredibly development and developer friendly landscape.

To argue that that's the only possibility is to ignore ample examples from other parts of the world where development and preservation have been found to coexist.

>> Rupp: In the world of preservation, a lot of people want to point fingers at the development community.

Well, the developers.

And to me, developers do what county and city and government policy and procedures in general allow them to do.

So it's up to the government to draw those lines and say, look, we understand your position, but we're also looking at these significant historic places that can educate people about our community, and they should be preserved or set aside.

>> Peréz: When we first looked at this and started the project, I remember very clearly a moment in which I had said, hey, whatever we have to spend to do the right thing, we're going to spend to do the right thing.

And the first number that came to us was $10 million, which I thought, "Oh, my goodness, you know, this is insane, you know?"

But I said, "Hey, it's a large project.

It's the right thing to do."

So the $10 million, um, became $45 million.

But if I had to do it over again, I would do it with pleasure because I think it's the right thing to do.

>> Woman: Item number 1, a resolution of the Miami Historic and Environmental Preservation Board approving or denying by a supermajority vote for the proposed designation for the property, located at approximately 444 Brickell Avenue, Miami, Florida.

>> Osceola: At the end of the day, to me, if I were to take an excavator into the oldest cemetery of non-Indigenous people here in Miami, there would be a public outcry.

Like, how dare she do that?

And I almost feel like I should ask for addresses, and so I can take some shovels and start excavating some of these people's ancestors and see how they like it.

From what I understand through Google search, if a -- if human remains are over 50 years old, they can be considered as artifacts.

So that means everybody's -- our human bones are up for grabs, you know?

>> Well, I would want the ancestors to remain on site, not to be sent off to universities to -- to be studied, not for our sacred objects that were put with the people, to be shipped off to museums for display.

Because tribes all across the United States and the world are fighting to get their objects back, repatriated.

So why are we going to allow that to occur in the state of Florida to do that, to send it off to a museum?

My people continue to fight every day against the systemic attempts of erasure and genocide of our people and of our history.

This landscape, though I don't always agree with how archaeology pans out, they do uncover interesting and important facts to the history of our landscape.

Miami is a baby.

There were people here long before.

>> Man: I just want you to know that as developers, we understand that we have a lot of risk.

And this is an archaeological zone.

I've developed in those as well.

There's a lot of things that we must do and abide by that.

It's my understanding this developer has done.

>> Man #1: It's been on the master site file to the state of Florida since the 1920s.

The time has come.

Give respect or we will take it.

[ Speaks global language ] >> Man #2: Thank you, sir.

>> Woman: Keep in mind where we come from.

The Seminole Tribe of Florida.

We remain unconquered today.

We don't come and try to disturb your burial grounds.

We don't try to come and be disrespectful.

We come in peace.

Thank you.

[ Speaks global language ] >> Keddell: The burial and observance of the dead is only of relevance to the living.

The Indians, well, the Native Americans I should call them, the Miccosukee in this case.

They determined that you cannot touch bones in any way and disturb them.

And that's their standard.

And that seems to be the standard of Native Americans across the country.

And it's been -- it's frustrated a lot of archaeologists, especially the early stuff coming across the Alaska divide.

They think they can date things differently.

They're able to examine a couple of found bodies, but they're not allowed to.

[ Indistinct conversations ] >> Wickman: I am on the side of continuity.

I firmly believe that there is a continuity between the ancient peoples and the peoples who have survived into the modern day.

It all hinges on a document which has been totally misunderstood, and it was a Spanish document that was produced in 1763 that had to do with the movement of the Spaniards out of Florida.

When Florida was turned over to the British as a result of the Seven Years War in Europe.

And there is a document that says that the last, I think it was 83 Spanish Indians left Florida with the Spaniards and the historians who have read that have chosen to believe that that left Florida an absolutely blank slate, and nothing could be further from reality.

The mere fact that the Spaniards left and that some Christianized Indians had gone with them does not mean that the entire state was devoid of Indians.

They knew that.

They knew this land.

They had lived on it.

They had hunted on it.

They had had sex on it.

They had died on it.

They had cooked food on it.

So why does it hurt non-Indians?

Why does it bother non-Indians so much not to make the connection between the -- the Aboriginal people and the modern people?

>> Carr: Whether you're a scholar, whether you're a visitor, whether you're a resident, this idea of -- of continuity is very important because that's how a community really is built and maintained that we have an indebtedness to the -- to the past as much as we are looking forward to the future.

[ Drums beating ] >> Pestle: I've been fortunate enough at various points in my career to -- to work fairly actively with various indigenous communities in this process that's called repatriation.

This process whereby certain classes of artifacts are potentially returned to indigenous groups.

And what I've come away appreciating and I, you know, should have known this to begin with is that there is no one indigenous perspective on ownership of the past or understanding or appreciation of archaeology.

Right?

You go from tribe to tribe, and there's going to be very different appreciations.

You go from individual to individual within those tribes, and you're going to find radically differing opinions.

And so I think, you know, what, what we should imagine and try to imagine is a point of compromise, again, just as we're going to have to potentially compromise with the developers.

I think that there's a point of compromise perhaps between the indigenous communities and archaeologists, whereby certain of the work that archaeologists can do can help to answer questions that the indigenous communities are interested in, right?

But that there are also are going to be things that we used to do as archaeologists that we can't and shouldn't do.

The human remains, the ancestral remains that are coming out of this site, As with any other archaeological site, any other piece of, of land in Florida are treated very differently from the cultural remains.

The property or, sorry, the ceramics, the animal bone, the shell.

The human remains fall under a state statute.

And to the best of my knowledge, that state statute has been followed to the letter of the law, and those remains are going to be treated and reburied in accordance with the wishes of two tribes in Florida who were consulted on this process.

The artifacts, on the other hand, everything else that is not human remains, or those artifacts that are found directly in association with burials.

Those, by Florida law, belong to the developer.

They belong to the Related Group.

And so, you know, I say this somewhat glibly, but the Related Group could choose to turn around and sell those artifacts on eBay.

They could choose to turn around and throw those artifacts in a dumpster.

Now, they're not going to do that, right?

But this is what I'm saying about the laws being just so property rights friendly, is that these artifacts that are indisputably the cultural heritage of everybody who calls Miami home, the indigenous groups that call South Florida home are literally left at the disposal of a corporation that can choose to do whatever they want with it.

>> Peréz: And look at Coconut Grove.

We were very, very surprised about the extent of the findings.

We felt that we had to do whatever was necessary to preserve our past, but it was the right thing to do.

So our first obligation is to present through the state all these items to the tribe, so they have a first choice.

The second one will be to do educational institutions like museums, universities, locally.

What our hope is that we can continue under the bridge, a bay walk and in that bay walk that we will have a series of exhibits.

So we would love to have a display with an explanation of how this happened, who the people were, and what these items mean.

>> Carr: What's remarkable about this site is that there's wooden artifacts.

And here, so far... Beginning in the 1960s through the 1980s, we led the way in creating a law that would protect archaeological sites in the county.

Because most people don't understand that the federal government has no protection for archaeological sites if it isn't on federal land or there aren't federal permits.

And likewise with the state.

>> Miyar: I think people can easily confuse the Native American Graves Protection and Repatriation Act, NAGPRA, with Florida's Statute, Burial Protective Statute 872 and when those laws actually apply to properties in Florida and to ancestral remains in Florida.

What does protect human remains on state and private lands is Chapter 872 in Florida.

>> Peréz: I knew that this property was in an archaeological zone more than 10 years ago when I bought the land, and that it was likely that we would find artifacts.

There's two things.

One is you do something because it's right, and the other one you do something because it's legal.

We took the rules very seriously.

The rules not only deal with the local Miami archaeologist, Dade County, but they deal mostly with the state and the Indian tribes.

We can deal directly with the Indian tribes.

The law says that we have to go through the state which represents the Indian tribes.

So we've had a very, very long discussion and an action plan based on what they told us to do.

So following, you know, the experiences that we had in downtown Miami, particularly on the water when we started a new luxury job at 1809.

We were very aware that this was going to be a place where we were going to find ancient artifacts, and we prepare for that.

So before anybody asked us, we got archaeologists, you know, to go there and start digging again, bringing the state in as representatives of all the Indian tribes and came up with a plan which has been very successful.

>> Carr: These artifacts are some of the most significant artifacts have been found in Southern Florida, because these artifacts represent human occupation, going back at least 10 to 11,000 years, including projectile points, what people would call arrowheads, particular types like this bowl and beveled, and a very early Dalton like point.

With this ground down base.

With the advent of radiocarbon dating, which was a boon to archaeologists, began to really understand the depth of time represented all across North America and in South Florida.

We learned that the work that we had done at the Cutler Fossil Site in South Dade County actually dated back to about 11,000 years.

That's the oldest human site in South Florida.

The Cutler Fossil Site where we found evidence of mammoth, llama, saber-toothed cat.

Just tremendous diversity of now extinct animals.

Here we are back at the artifacts of the Miami Circle.

And for me, what's important is seeing these artifacts in a different light after being at the Brickell site and finding so much material associated with the circle in terms of the main village.

>> George: You know, it's interesting.

Bob, right from the city's inception in 1896, we were dealing with archaeology.

One of the first major actions in that spring of 1896 was leveling an Indian burial mound.

So right from the beginning of this archaeology, on the site of what became the Great Royal Palm Hotel of Henry Flagler's.

And we've kind of taken it from there.

>> Carr: Well, I think what for me, what was exciting was the realization that some of these artifacts were indicating that Miami, that Miami was connected to other parts of North America in a very substantial way through trade.

And one of the most exciting artifacts is this axe right here.

>> George: Get my glasses on for this.

>> Carr: This is made out of basalt that came from the Appalachian Mountains.

Look at this.

It has a perfect edge, preserved.

And the reason is because it was never used as a tool.

This was actually made hundreds of hours of work to create this by grinding down the stone, and it was placed on the eastern posthole of the Miami Circle as an offering to dedicate the structure for perpetuity in terms of protecting it.

So you're holding an artifact that probably was put in the circle when the circle was created around 400 A.D.

[ Drums beating ] >> Pestle: The traditional telling of the story of Miami is, is that it's a young city and a city of migrants.

And to a large degree, it is.

I mean, if you look around the city now, obviously, deep roots of migrants from Latin America and the Caribbean and more recently, you know, after COVID, folks coming in from other parts of the U.S.

farther north and the snowbird phenomenon.

But what that telling misses is the fact that this city was home to a whole variety of Indigenous peoples stretching back for thousands of years.

And I think, unfortunately, because of this rather pernicious myth about our youth as a city -- and, I mean, I include myself in that -- you know, I only arrived here 10 years ago -- we choose not to see and not to privilege or protect those aspects of more deep history that are, in fact, around us and beneath our feet.

>> Renick: Most of us think of Miami as a young city with new buildings going up all around us, especially in the downtown area.

One of the biggest projects coming up is the James L. Knight International Center and a 19-story hotel to be built on the banks of the Miami River at the Brickell Bridge.

>> Azcuy: Construction will begin here of the multi-million dollar James L. Knight Convention Center complex.

But 1,800 years ago, this exact site was inhabited by prehistoric Native Americans.

>> Reporter: It is the biggest archaeological dig in South Florida's history.

>> Martinez: It consists of a very well-preserved Indian village, going back to about 8200, and occupied heavily by prehistoric peoples up until about 1750 or so.

It's quite a significant site.

>> Reporter #2: There are no surviving descendants in Florida now, but archaeologists have found traces of the Tequestas in Miami's Brickell area.

Next to the mansion once owned by Miami Mayor Maurice Ferré, an ancient burial ground believed to be 1,000 to 2,000 years old.

Today, Carr found what he expects to be the first complete body of a tribe member.

>> Carr: We have found that they have definitely spent time and energy in deliberately placing these individuals beneath the ground.

In this case, in this particular burial, they have carefully stacked rocks above the body, probably to protect it from animals coming back and digging out the grave.

>> Reporter #2: Carr says, in most cases, when he comes across evidence of Indian life, he documents it but leaves everything intact, undisturbed.

>> Osceola: I can talk about my own personal life because I've lived it.

Institutions don't want to have to -- they want to have someone who's not even of our people, who got a degree in studying Indigenous people, because they're the authority.

I'm like, I'm living this life as an Indigenous person.

How is this person that has this degree in Indigenous culture the authority on my own life?

I'm like, I'm living my life.

Our tribe scientists who have their degree would relate what the Miccosukee people have told them, and then they would come back all upset that they're like, "Can you believe what they told us?"

We're like, "What?"

"Oh, it's anecdotal."

Like, this is your life, and they're telling us it's anecdotal.

It doesn't matter to the conversation.

When you call human remains artifacts, you dehumanize what those human remains are, so that the public, you tell them -- "Oh, we're just removing artifacts."

Because you're calling them artifacts and you legally, in definition and terminology of your industry, are calling them artifacts, you've took out the human equation out of that and relegated them to be something to be sold and displayed.

We say we were born from the earth and we return from the earth, so our loved ones, when we put them out to rest, we actually return them to the Everglades.

And over time, their body becomes part of the soil.

Nourishment for the soil.

If you go back and visit, there might be a tree there.

There might be other plant life there.

I don't know who else can say their DNA is actually in the Everglades itself.

It's in the soil, it's in the water, it's in the trees.

And so we're a part of that ecosystem.

And it's that respect of if you need nourishment, you ask for permission.

You can stay in the line, but face the water.

The water is saying it wants prayer and that it wants to help.

I want you to pray that they send our message for help to protect these sacred sites, that they send this message around the world to all the waters of the world.

And I also want you to pray for the health and abundance of the water and acknowledge the importance that water is life.

>> Pestle: Going back to the 1950s, there have been excavations and explorations of Little Salt Spring that have revealed that many thousands of years ago, during a period called the Paleo-Indian, when water levels were lower, this was a site that was visited by some of these hunter-gatherer, food-foraging Indigenous people who did things like hunt and cook giant land tortoises and mastodons or mammoths, so these giant land mammals, megafauna that lived in South Florida at the end of the Pleistocene, beginning of the Holocene.

As water levels rose, Little Salt Spring became a different kind of site where there was both an inhabitation component, where people were living, but also there was a mortuary component, where people were being buried in these sort of waterlogged contexts, which is something that happens across Florida and the archaic.

There are other sites like Windover Swamp that's very, very famous for some of these waterlogged burials.

>> Carr: Beginning in the 1960s, there were divers in Little Salt Spring and Warm Mineral Springs, and they were finding bones, they were finding human bones, they were finding artifacts.

And it was brought to the attention of archaeologists, including the underwater archaeologist for the state at that time, Wilburn Cockrell.

And he began diving there, demonstrating that these were major sites and these were an example of a type of site that people didn't even know existed.

These were mortuary ponds, and the bodies were deliberately placed in the water, often staked into the mud, holding the bodies down.

Now, why?

Why was the water so important?

And the reason is that water was regarded as a barrier, as the portal between life and death.

We know from studies that were done ethnographically in the southeast how important this barrier between the living and the dead was, because for Indigenous people, the idea that we have as Westerners of supernatural, did not exist because there was only nature or natural forces that were on a continuum.

And what we regard as supernatural was just part of this cosmology, this cosmology of understanding and belief of how the universe worked.

We know from the church accounts from missions in South Florida that water was important because they talked about that the Tequesta had three souls.

One soul was in the eye, another soul was your shadow, and the third was your reflection in the water.

That's the key to understanding the importance of these wet mortuaries, because when you're looking in the water, they believed that they were looking at their soul.

And therefore, you needed to put that soul back into the water when you died.

That's where eternity was.

That was eternal life was through the soul and through water.

And the Tequesta and other Indigenous people in South Florida had a similar belief, explaining why bodies were being placed, in part, on the shores of the beaches and in places where they were exposed.

And eventually, many of them were buried in dry places, but they were using water as a vehicle, as part of that mortuary process.

>> Osceola: It's not just the Miami Circle.

This entire area is important and sacred to the Indigenous people.

And this is our church.

You know, right now, where I'm sitting, this equates to a Catholic church or a synagogue.

People understand those, but they don't understand when it doesn't look like something that they're familiar with.

[ Drumming ] >> Wickman: When a person dies, the traditional way and the way that was still in use when I went to the tribe in the early '90s, the clan of that person and the medicine clan that was closest to them in geographic proximity, that could get to them, would set up medicine, and you had to do medicine for four days because you had to entice the spirit of that person to leave the ground without harming anybody, because they could be harmful if they didn't go where they were supposed to go, and to go from the east to the west.

The tradition was to bury a person or to lay a person on the ground looking toward the east, because that's where the sun rises and that's where the path begins.

We call it the Milky Way.

But the ancestors of the Seminoles saw that Milky Way, and they saw it as a pathway for the spirit of a deceased person to go across to their permanent home, where the deceased spirits go.

And if you didn't do medicine in order to placate that spirit and encourage it to go the way it was supposed to go, it would stick around, it would stay, and it would become harmful, and it might try to take other people with it just because it became malevolent, because it was unbound, it was unfettered.

It wasn't in the place where it needed to be.

>> Miyar: There have just been cultures living and engaging and trading all around Florida for at least 14,000 years.

Archaeology has definitely gone through many paradigm shifts, and it started off more as being a kind of a glorified looting, really, in many ways.

Even some of the more famous archaeologists back in the day.

>> Florida has not always had laws and regulations that would protect its historic sites and keep people from believing that they can just dig up any piece of land and be astonished by what they find because they don't understand what they find and keep what they find, or throw it away or pass it on.

They've wound up in too many living rooms.

They've wound up in too many garages and items that should be in museums, that ought to be a part of the common record and be there to help us understand all of our own pasts, are simply broken, they're destroyed.

They're never recorded properly.

We dig up pieces of our own past and try to extrapolate from those pieces to what the whole entire reality might have been.

And that doesn't work.

>> Osceola: This is an act of resistance, to erase our people.

Even if you take the artifacts away, does not make it any less sacred.

The artifacts -- and there were a ton, a lot of artifacts that were removed that they want to study, we're asking for that common decency to respect the Indigenous people that, you know, we're human beings, too.

Our ancestors deserve the right to remain in the ground, not to be dug up and put on display somewhere.

>> Carr: The question is, who owns Miami's history?

And the stakeholders are the residents, government, the scientists, the archaeologists, the Indigenous people.

All of these groups and people are stakeholders.

We all own it together, and we have a responsibility to work together to do the best possible thing, which is easy to say and harder to do.

Finding the best solutions for respecting, documenting, preserving what we can, these are important endeavors, and we are not isolated in doing that.

And Indigenous people should not feel that they're isolated because we -- and there are many of us who really want to work closely with them to come up with solutions that are respectful and doing the right thing.

>> Pestle: The cultural heritage of South Florida, I believe, belongs first and foremost to the Indigenous descendants of the people that lived here, but it also belongs to the living peoples of South Florida, and it also belongs -- Indigenous or not.

Right?

Doesn't matter if you got here a year ago or, you know, your family can trace yourself back five generations, it also belongs to the world.

If the Italian government decided that they were going to bulldoze half of the Colosseum to put in a condominium, clearly there would be outcry by Italians, right?

The descendants of the Romans.

Clearly there would be outcry from across Europe.

There would be global outcry, right?

And so I don't think that those things are mutually exclusive.

This is, first and foremost, the heritage of the Indigenous descendants, but it's also the heritage of all Miamians.

It's also the heritage of the people of the world, because one of the fundamental tenets of anthropology -- and anthropology has got lots of problems and biases and a checkered history -- but one of the things that I think still holds up, and the reason that anthropology, to me, still retains value and why we still have anthropology departments at universities, is that we know that by studying and understanding any one group of people, we gain a better understanding of all people, because we are all one species.

Studying this one bit of history that, indeed, belongs first and foremost to this place tells us more about coastal adaptation in the past, tells us more about Indigenous trade in the past, tells us more about management of ecological resources in this place.

And those are stories and understandings that help us understand people in similar situations around the globe.

>> Rupp: You can't separate preservation and development in the city of Miami.

They really should go hand in hand, and we should work together to make sure that the city evolves appropriately and in a manner that is considerate of our history and heritage.

>> Carr: As an archaeologist, in my profession, that looking to find areas of compromise has always been the objective preserving the best parts of an archaeological site.

If you can't preserve all of it, some is better than none.

Examples of that are the Suni Sands burial site in Jupiter, where the developer was willing to preserve the central part of the site -- not all of it, but the central part of it -- and do whatever needed to be done to document the part that would be affected.

I thought that was a good example of compromise.

Compromise is really the secret of success in preservation.

We found Tequesta human remains all mixed through the soil.

So they were sleeping on top of all these bodies.

And then, we found Seminole war artifacts scattered.

For myself, I find that being part of the process is finding solutions.

And it's easier to do that on the inside working than it is from the outside.

But government has the ultimate responsibility of deciding what and should be preserved and how to get there.

Like every great city in the world, like Rome, like Cairo, like Jerusalem, we are indebted to what came before us.

And this is a way of paying homage because we need to respect the past, and we're doing it.

>> I find Florida's archaeology to be incredible and unique.

And it's -- I think maybe some of it had gone overlooked in the past just because it's different.

And even being raised in Miami and trying to do gardening in Miami, you hit limestone after just a few feet, and you have to use a metal rod to actually excavate through the limestone to plant a tree.

And sometimes there would be archaeological deposits within those limestone solution holes, which is also a unique thing in South Florida to even find things like that.

One of the big differences here, we don't have the type of soil needed and terrain needed to build those big earthen mounds like you see up north.

So what we have, though, that's very special is shell mounds.

And they are sacred in and of themselves in that whether or not they're refuse mounds or they're mounds that have now either been utilized then or serve a different purpose now as potential burial mounds.

>> Wickman: There were certain mounds that were created specifically to hold the remains of people who were leaders, who were mikos, or a miko-an-opa is a leader of leaders, a miko over mikos.

All right?

And there were very special places.

And when the Spaniards first got here in the early 16th century, they found some of those mounds that were being used to hold the remains of people.

By the time we get to the Seminole Wars and the way the Seminole people were pushed in the first half of the 19th century, we found, for instance, that a lot of people were being buried inside hollow logs.

>> There were a few scientific types who looked at some of the shell mounds, and were the first in American archaeology to develop ideas of stratigraphy, of seeing sequence of age by looking at the levels.

But nonetheless, there was no desire to preserve any Florida monument in terms of the antiquity of indigenous people.

In fact, there was even doubts that some of these mounds and these earthworks, including canals -- South Florida has the largest, most extensive prehistoric canal system outside of Mexico, built by Indigenous people going back to 400 A.D.

And when American settlers and soldiers encountered these, they immediately wrote on their maps and notes that, "Oh, Europeans have built these fortifications."

They always refer to anything monumental as being European.

Because they couldn't believe, they didn't want to believe, that Indigenous people were capable of doing this.

Kendall, how long is that tube?

How long is this sample going to be?

>> Kendall: 18 feet.

>> Carr: 18 feet, which should be quite a -- >> Kendall: It'll be close to that.

>> Carr: So that mentality was never really lost in the development of Florida or, really, any part of the United States.

And to the degree the city of Miami, which had its roots in terms of its first Spanish settlement in the 1500s, and eventually, again, with these American settlers who got there in the 1830s, and Bahamians who had been there earlier.

And in fact, it wasn't just the Royal Palm Hotel being built by Flagler that led to the destruction of this major burial mound in front of the Royal Palm Hotel, because it was blocking the view of the bay.

>> Keddell: But here's the mound here, and at the time, it says, "Mound supposedly to have been made by Indians."

And this map was drawn by a soldier who was stationed here in 1849, in December.

But the mound was not actually on the site of Flagler's hotel.

Before his railroad got here, he sent Mr.

Sewell to prepare the grounds for the Royal Palm Hotel.

They leveled the mound with shovels and wheelbarrows and used that to build the seawall for the hotel.

>> There are pictures of Bahamian workers just carting the dirt away, taking all of the human remains, throwing them into a hole, into another part of Miami.

Some of the skulls being taken to the Girtman store on Flagler Street and being sold to tourists for 50 cents or a dollar.

There was absolutely no regard, no respect for the human dignity that was represented by these people.

And in fact, the irony of this, that many of the skeletons that they had uncovered from that mound were, in reality, soldiers from the Seminole Indian War, and they didn't realize they were digging up White people and selling them.

That's how disconnected they were from that.

And so in addition to that major mound, there was another 10 mounds around the mouth of the river, all of them destroyed, every one of them, because none of them had any value or any kind of importance to the residents of Miami.

This pottery is from probably the glaze one period.

Met Square -- what was phenomenal about the work there is that we actually found the remnants of 11 circles.

>> George: I remember.

>> Carr: Two of which have been preserved.

And when we had our surveyors go out and do laser scans of all of the different postholes, and we did our own drone flights and so forth, we saw that there were patterns and part of the patterns that connecting the circles were these linear alignments, almost like pathways, but it didn't make any sense.

Why would you have a post for a pathway?

And we realized it was because the pathways were elevated.

They were boardwalks and that the houses were on top of probably some kind of planking.

But again, on these posts.

So it was not sitting on the ground, but they were elevated.

So these were elevated towns that were subject to inundation or flooding.

But you could literally, in some cases, just pull your canoe right under your house, and you can see something comparable on the Orinoco River, Indigenous villages just lining the rivers on these scaffolding and walkways.

>> Keddell: This is really interesting because these lines, Bob Carr thought they were raised walkways, but he's beginning to think they've been fences for drying out netting.

Because if you look at any fishing community, on the water side, they're usually repairing nets a lot.

This was a major cemetery.

There's bones all along here, and there's sinkholes, bones here, bones here, scattered remains here, and obviously extending beyond.

So they used the mound as so much fill.

You could see where the original seabed and the original seawall was, and it was full of co-mingled bones.

Sewall writes of giving away 60 skulls and burying a whole lot of bones in a hole.

But then when Bob Carr was examining that, many bones were just part of the soil and was just building the seawall, and that's when they dig up the biggest cemetery so far discovered, a Native American cemetery in Florida -- over 500 bodies.

And we know that by looking at the map that it cuts off, and it would extend beyond the boundaries of what they did.

How many bodies in total?

We don't know.

>> Rupp: Back in the early 2000s, when across the river from the Miami Circle, the Met Square development was underway.

And when the demolition was done and they were scraping away the parking lot and any structures that were there, again, archaeological features were found.

And so Dade Heritage Trust, along with many other advocates for preserving our archaeological heritage, believed that that should be deemed an historic site, as well.

The politicians at that time basically said, "If you guys move ahead with trying to historically designate that area, we will appeal that designation and take the designation away.

So let's come up with an agreement where we can at least preserve some of those archaeological features and ensure that they're properly curated and interpreted so the public can be educated about the significance of that site."

Years went by.

The developer did not comply.

So Dade Heritage Trust took them back to court and joined the city of Miami in that process.

So we worked hard to let them know they weren't going to get away with what they promised they would do, and they're still working on that right now, but we're keeping a close eye on them.

>> Keddell: I've seen the Historic Preservation Board be unanimous in opposing the previous development at Met Square.

The commissioners overruled them.

But nobody from the Historic Board resigned.

I think they should have resigned en masse.

I mean, if you have an advisory board as a city and they're unanimous in opposing something, then why do you have it?

>> Wickman: In terms of Florida's material culture past, that subject in our state is very much a double-edged sword.

On the one hand, we have so much history to uncover.

On the other, we have so much promise, so much future, that construction is always far ahead of archaeology.

>> Peréz: We're believers that if this was the place where the earliest settlers were, it is something that we owe to spend the money in preservation.

There's a huge lack of funding for the arts and culture, and that goes all the way from the state to the federal government.

And it has repercussions on the local government because their needs are increasing.

They now do not get the funds from the outside, and they're cutting -- and the first thing that they cut is culture.

And that's all ramifications of culture, whether it's, you know, paintings or museums or dance or archaeology.

When that happens, it's extra important for the private sector to step up even in a bigger way so all these preservation and cultural efforts can continue.

[ Drumming ] >> Carr: I think the Miami Circle was a great forecast of the future of archaeological preservation in Miami, in the sense that we're at a point now where that kind of concern about losing important archaeological sites to development has been of great interest.

That certainly was the case in the Miami Circle.

The difference was that you had support from government and the monies -- and more importantly the monies -- to do the acquisition, and that's the key part.

But understanding chronology is important to archaeologists.

And interestingly enough, Indigenous people don't think like that.

They don't think about what is the oldest.

They think about what is ancestral.

>> Pestle: The lie is that Miami is a young city, right?

Because we never see the past, we don't necessarily care to protect it unless people start sounding the alarm bell, right?

We don't privilege these aspects of the past, and we think about archaeology as being something that's done over there, when in reality, it's all around us, in this case, right?

South Florida has a history that goes back thousands, maybe tens of thousands of years, and because we've been told it doesn't exist, we don't see it.

And when we don't see it, we don't protect it.

And if we don't protect it, it doesn't exist, and the lie persists.

You can develop in a way that looks forward while still respecting the past.

And there's ample examples from around the world of modern glass and steel buildings side by side with the remains, the ruins of ancient civilizations.

>> Osceola: Just like a tree needs to have roots to stand up, to thrive and survive, because those tree gets, through its root system, gets its nourishment.

The people of a society get their nourishment of their humanity and humility and how they need to be as a people from the nourishment of their history, through their roots and their connection.

And so it's very important to preserve history and not destroy it.

And that history teaches us to respect the environment of the land and respect each other as a people.

Because I always say, if you can't respect the dead, how can you expect to respect the living?

You have to be able to respect the dead.

♪♪ ♪♪ ♪♪ ♪♪ ♪♪ ♪♪ ♪♪ ♪♪ >> Announcer: For more information on "Broken Ground: Unearthing the Tequesta Trail," visit brokengrounddocumentary.org.

To purchase a copy of "Broken Ground: Unearthing the Tequesta Trail," visit shop.wlrn.org.