Shone's Friendship Farm, Moline, IL, 1997
In 1993, the New Lenox (IL)Park District received a permit to construct a parking lot on a 5-acre parcel of land known to be the site of an ancient village and burial ground. The park district removed the remains of three people, later determined to be Miami, for an access road that was abandoned once the site design changed. The New Lenox excavation catalyzed the 1994 founding of Midwest Save Our Ancestors Remains & Resources Indigenous Network Group (Midwest SOARRING), which helps tribal groups throughout the Midwest prevent the desecration of graves and sacred sites and achieve the repatriation of their ancestral remains
Midwest SOARRING achieved a major victor in 1997, when a horse farm owned by members of the John Deere family near Moline, Illinois was to be redeveloped as a championship golf course. The property included bluffs along the Illinois River that were sacred to the Meskwaki, and initial archeological surveys revealed many native gravesites and mounds. Midwest SOARRING worked with the Meskwaki Nation of Iowa, the American Indian Council of Illinois (AICI), and the Quad-Cities Native American League to reach an agreement with the John Deere corporationSee also -
Clare Farrell, "Coming Home: The Return of the Ancestors" in Native Chicago, ed. Terry Straus and Grant P. Arndt, 1998