To the editor:

Re: "Province offers millions to Musqueam in latest land dispute," vancourier. com, June 14.

I find it hard to believe that the provincial office of Forests, Lands and Natural Resource Operations didn't know that intact human remains would be found in the Marpole midden site ("Provincial government orders stop to Marpole archeological dig," June 13). Published photographs and articles going back as far as 1895 describe in detail skulls and skeletons found at the Marpole, or Eburne, midden site.

What I find equally incredulous is that the provincial government is willing to pave-over the remains of someone's ancestors at the South Fraser Perimeter site-and that the Musqueam have given them permission to do it.

As Mike Howell reported on Thursday the provincial government offered a $4.8 million payment to the Musqueam band, who claimed traditional ownership of the Glenrose and St. Mungo midden sites, in order to free up those 5,000-year-old sites for a freeway. And yet the province is willing to help preserve the younger Marpole site.

Why are the skeletons of ancestors at one site sacred, and the remains at the other location just... garbage?

Rhiannon Coppin, Vancouver