![\"\u201cNot](\"http:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/03\/BSI-hearing-pix.jpg\")
<\/a>Business leaders, attorneys, lawmakers, and education officials were present at the packed hearing.<\/p>\n
A majority of those who spoke supported the proposal. One couple notably engaged in a back and forth between comments, taking the microphone to argue their cause several times.<\/p>\n
Businessman Alex Sablan supported the project and \u201canticipated the recovery of different artifacts.\u201d It would be an \u201copportunity to see\u201d and showcase Chamorros with this project.<\/p>\n
Speaking in Chamorro, a woman testified against the BSI proposal. She urged respect of the burial sites, to \u201clet them rest.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cIf you want to dig, start with your mother\u2019s burial grounds,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n
BSI CEO Mark Brown acknowledged her concerns for cultural sites but noted that he has observed squatters defecating in the area.<\/p>\n
\u201cPeople are going to the bathroom [there]. I want to take care\u201d of the area, he said.<\/p>\n
He said they don\u2019t know what they are going to find but assured they would \u201chonor, recover, and care\u201d for whatever is found.<\/p>\n
Richard U. Hofschneider said it is time for locals to stand up, pointing to Hawaii where there are parks honoring their native leaders.<\/p>\n
\u201cMr. Brown, build a museum for us,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
Sen. Sixto Igisomar (R-Saipan), who is a former Lottery Commission chair, spoke as a public citizen in favor of the project.<\/p>\n
House Speaker Joseph Leon Guerrero (Ind-Saipan) asked Historic Preservation officer Eric Lash about the \u201cover 200 remains and countless artifacts\u201d discovered in a previous study.<\/p>\n
He said the two different sets of data have to be reconciled, to ensure all the data is analyzed together and \u201cnot in pieces.\u201d<\/p>\n
Soon after, Michael A. Fleming, principal investigator of the previous study, spoke up. He said he has been paying rental for the last 15 years for the storage of the human remains he had found. He said they already had done work on 90 percent of the property that is public.<\/p>\n
He urged Brown to come to the \u201cnegotiation table\u201d to address the 200 remains he had found. He said he would only need \u201cfew hundred thousand\u201d to complete his work. He said he was \u201cnot asking for a job.\u201d He said he kept the remains for the last 15 years, out of faith that \u201cthis property is prime.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cThis information is not for free,\u201d he added.<\/p>\n
Brown said in an interview after the hearing that it was \u201cvery interesting\u201d but they haven\u2019t been able to substantiate Fleming\u2019s claims yet.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe will follow up to see if it is real. And there is no reason why we can\u2019t work something out. Like I said, it\u2019s the first that I\u2019ve seen him, hearing him, and what he\u2019s done in the past, so I\u2019m\u2026a little curious why he just showed up at the hearing. It\u2019s the first time I\u2019ve heard his name or his work in the past,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
The public heard Best Sunshine International, Ltd.\u2019s \u201carchaeological data recovery project\u201d plans for its proposed…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":47,"featured_media":193682,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[900,4],"tags":[1707,2822,2823,44],"class_list":["post-193681","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-featured","category-local-news","tag-best-sunshine-international","tag-best-sunshine-owned","tag-jose-kaipat","tag-study"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/193681","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/47"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=193681"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/193681\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/193682"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=193681"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=193681"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=193681"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}