'Maze Runner' cast criticized for taking New Mexico artifacts

“It would make a good statement about how to treat other people, including Native Americans, and stress that someone’s culture isn’t a joke,” she said by phone from her home in Connecticut on Monday. “It would make me even a bigger fan if he apologizes.

“I wanted to cut him slack because I am such a fan of his, but ignoring a problem like this just feeds into the racism that Native Americans already deal with,” she said. “I wanted something done about it. I thought, ‘Why not start a petition?’ ”

In the television interview, O’Brien said the cast and crew were warned not to take anything from what is a sacred site on a ranch near Placitas.

“Don’t take anything and respect the grounds. Don’t take any artifacts, rocks, skulls, anything like that,” he said on the Live With Kelly and Michael television show in September. “And everyone just takes stuff. Obviously.”

He acknowledged that he was “one of them,” meaning he also took something from the set, though he did not elaborate.

Within days, five of the cast members fell ill on the set, O’Brien said. “Random stuff. Random appendectomy. Random 105 fever. Random broken ankle. Crazy.”

The film’s director, Wes Ball, told the Radio Times that the production underwent a lot of bad luck. Actress Kaya Scodelario echoed O’Brien’s concerns in a Radio Times interview, saying the film was “haunted. It was cursed.”

Archaeological experts say that while removal of such objects is wrong and might even be illegal, they don’t buy into the idea that such actions would prompt a curse.

“I do not think that there are curses, but I do think there are guilty consciences,” said Maxine McBrinn, curator of archaeology at the Museum of Indian Arts and Culture. “People who do that often know they have done something wrong, and our conscience is designed to keep us from doing bad things. I suspect that if you know you have done something wrong and haven’t moved to make it right, then you probably are not in the best possible shape you can be in.”

As an archaeologist, McBrinn considers it a “bad thing” to remove such artifacts from their original sites. “When somebody picks something up from an archaeological site, all that information that the ‘something’ might have given us is gone. Where the object was found in association with other objects … has been destroyed. So you are destroying information when you do that.”

Diane Bird, an archivist at the Museum of Indian Arts and Culture’s Laboratory of Anthropology, said she often fields phone calls from people who swear that “all sorts of ‘bad things’ happened to them after they took something from somewhere. We do have times when we receive drop-offs of arrowheads, pottery shards and other items with people writing little notes saying they are sorry they took it.

“But I can’t tell you that there is a curse anymore than I can say there is a curse in the Egyptian or Pharaoh culture when they dig things up in pyramids — the Pharaoh’s Curse is on it supposedly.”

Cunningham said she doesn’t buy the “curse” angle either. “That’s just more mocking of Native American culture,” she said.

Principal Entertainment’s Los Angeles branch, which represents O’Brien, did not respond to an email seeking comment.

Maze Runner: The Scorch Trials, based on the James Dashner book series, follows a group of teens fighting an evil world organization and fleeing into a desolate wasteland where they face various dangers.

The film was partially shot at the Diamond Tail Ranch near Placitas last year. Box Office Mojo reports that the film has grossed more than $200 million to date. In Santa Fe, the film is playing at the Regal Santa Fe Stadium 14 and Violet Crown cinemas.

Contact Robert Nott at 986-3021 or rnott@sfnewmexican.com.