Oregon Public Broadcasting

Oregon’s Paiute Indians got a long-awaited wish this summer.

The National Park Service listed a series of the tribe’s archeological drawings on the National Register of Historic Places.

The Confederated Tribes of Warm Springs, the Burns Paiute tribe, and the Klamath Tribes all consider the site east of Bend to be sacred.

Cara Kaser is with Oregon’s Historic Preservation Office. She says the site has been vandalized in recent years.

Cara Kaser: “The tribes have a right to their site to be protected and not to be vandalized, and that’s what has happened with this pictograph site in the past. There’s been people who have carved their initials over things, they shot bullets into the rock, someone came in and tried to chip away a whole panel to get a whole section of it out.”

The site’s exact address is not being disclosed to protect the paintings.

Furthermore, the state blacked out and redacted information from the site’s public nomination form.

It is a misdemeanor for an unauthorized person to take, damage, or alter an archeological object in Oregon.