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ABSTRACT. The Indiana Forest Alliance (IFA) sponsored an extended biodiversity survey (i.e., Ecoblitz) between 2014 and 2018 within the Back-Country Area of Morgan Monroe and Yellowwood State Forest in Indiana. [...]

INTRODUCTIONMost people understand that interment of human remains is permanent, “earth to earth, ashes to ashes, dust to dust.” But for Native Americans since their earliest contacts with Europeans, this understanding has been violated. The Pilgrims brought loot from a grave back to the Mayflower —according to the admissions in a journal first published in 1622—setting a precedent of European disrespect for Native American dead that continues to this day. The sanctity of the grave as a straightforward matter of human dignity might seem easily protected in these enlightened times. Indians no longer pose any threat to European-American expansion; the new country on the “new” continent has achieved its manifest destiny. Continued grave robbing may only add insult to numerous injuries, but our contemporary lack of cloture on this issue was demonstrated again on 16 November 1990, when the Native American Graves Protection and Repatriation Act (NAGPRA) was signed into law.

Eagle Marsh, a 289.8 ha (716-acre) wetland nature preserve located on the southwest border of Fort Wayne, Indiana, is one of the largest wetland restorations ever undertaken in Indiana. The Little River Wetlands Project (LRWP) began acquisition, planning, and restoration in 2005 to 2007. The first biodiversity survey (also known as a bioblitz) of Eagle Marsh was conducted on 31 May and 1 June 2014. Over 125 scientists, naturalists, students, and other volunteers on thirteen different taxonomic teams observed and reported 728 taxa during the event. The thirteen taxonomic teams included aquatic macroinvertebrates, beetles, birds, butterflies, dragonflies and damselflies, fish, freshwater mussels, herpetofauna, small mammals, mushrooms/fungi, singing insects, snail-killing flies, and vascular plants. This manuscript presents both a brief history of Eagle Marsh and a summary overview of the results gathered by the thirteen taxonomic teams. Keywords: Bioblitz, biodiversity survey, Eagle Marsh, state-endangered, county records, INTRODUCTION Eagle Marsh, a 716-acre wetland nature preserve, is located on the southwest border of Fort Wayne, Indiana (Fig. 1). The wetland preserve has over 11 miles of trails allowing [...]

Academia is the author's second career, and his path to that career was unusual. Oklahoma schools had little to offer, and he had given up on education in the ninth grade because it had long since given up on him. The Vietnam War bought him a position in the Air Force that improved his self-image, and the GI Bill bought him an education. He came out of the University of Texas at Austin, having graduated "magna cum laude," convinced that his educational failures were the fault of a system that expected nothing of Indian children. He was trained to be a high school teacher, and that was his plan. It had not occurred to him that no school system would hire somebody who was so plainly convinced that the public schools were squandering the talent of minority kids. Having no teaching offers, he proceeded to law school, where his heroes were Thurgood Marshall and William O. Douglas. While in law school he did an internship with the United Farm Workers of America, AFL-CIO, and discovered that south Texas was full of Indians who did not identify themselves as Indian. The time finally arrived when his kids were out of school and he no longer needed money. Getting paid to teach and write was a lifelong dream for which he was willing to take the two-thirds pay cut. The University of Texas at San Antonio (UTSA) was a school with a mission, and it was a mission he shared: to bring affordable, quality, public higher education to south Texas. When he was hired he was told that he should expect to publish an article every year. He was denied tenure after he created a stir when his proposal to invite a Native American to speak for the university's Women's History Week was turned down. One of his outside reviewers expressed shock that he had not been tenured, and in spite of some stupid things he did to get in his way, the author was recruited by Indiana University, one of the top criminal justice programs in the country. The author has many more questions than answers, but he takes some heart in what has happened in this journal. Devon Mihesuah has spoken up in her call for papers. She has said it out loud, and not for the first time. The problem is not merit. The problem is discrimination. Whether they hurt Native Americans because they do not think or they hurt them because they can, somebody has to speak up before they can deal with the problem. (Contains 11 notes.)