Humanity on DisplayMain MenuIntroductionMeet CarolThe Old Croghan ManNAGPRAThe Native American Graves Protection and Repatriation ActAcknowledgements and ReferencesPaige Harris04ccc7a45284ab6d401e9f51ea973d628632a7db
The nation's first full-time NAGPRA investigator
12022-04-17T14:26:51-07:00Paige Harris04ccc7a45284ab6d401e9f51ea973d628632a7db399351Indian Country Today's daily newscast: We meet the new official hired by the National Park Service to help repatriate Native human remains and cultural objects.plain2022-04-17T14:26:52-07:00YouTube2022-02-09T21:00:18ZUp8uLJvHUuoIndian Country TodayPaige Harris04ccc7a45284ab6d401e9f51ea973d628632a7db
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12022-04-17T14:27:04-07:00Paige Harris04ccc7a45284ab6d401e9f51ea973d628632a7dbAliyah Chavez interviews David Barland-LilesPaige Harris2A Native woman, Aliyah Chavez, interviews the newly appointed NAGPRA Investigator David Barland-Liles.plain2022-04-17T14:33:06-07:00Paige Harris04ccc7a45284ab6d401e9f51ea973d628632a7db
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1media/Screen Shot 2022-04-17 at 2.03.40 PM.png2022-01-31T17:12:01-08:00NAGPRA17The Native American Graves Protection and Repatriation Actimage_header11350872022-04-17T14:38:59-07:00Our final body is not so much a body as it is the absence of one: Prior to 1990, the skeletal remains of pre-Columbian Native Americans could be found on display in a wide variety of museums. In 1990, the Native American Graves Protection and Repatriation Act (NAGPRA) was passed, and the majority of museums took these bones off of display for good. Some of them were returned to the living descendants of the tribes from which they came. Many were re-buried according to the religious and cultural traditions it is believed they practiced in life. Still others were packed into storage and moved to parts of the museum where they would only be accessed by researchers, and not on display to the general public.
All of this took place according to guidelines set by the new law, which still governs the handling of Native American graves, remains, and grave goods. NAGPRA requires that if an organization:
Is federally funded
Possesses human remains or cultural objects AND
Those remains or cultural objects are demonstrated to be culturally, religiously, or genetically connected to an existing and federally recognized Native tribe
NAGPRA has been described as one of the first US laws to consider what is sacred from the Native American perspective. It allows modern-day tribes to establish their connection to the remains and objects in a variety of ways, including DNA, written records, traditional kinship systems, and cultural similarity, which reflects the fact that Native American concepts of ancestry and heritage differ from those of the hegemonic American culture. Repatriation is conducted on a case-by-case basis, and in some instances tribal leaders and museum curators work together to keep cultural objects on display in ways that represent the objects as parts of a living, breathing, changing culture, rather than as static relics of a historical past. This might include continuing to use the objects in ceremonies and rituals, or displaying them in ways that are more “alive” than the traditional sealed glass case (such as regularly rotating them or exposing them to the natural environment). These curatorial choices seek to center modern tribal cultures in the visitor’s mind as something that still exists and is able to represent itself without needing a proxy to interpret or communicate its stories.
In cases where remains cannot be connected to any living tribe, and therefore cannot be repatriated, museums have nevertheless received pushback for keeping the remains on display. Virtually all museums have removed these unclaimed remains to their storage and research areas, where they are accessible only by request of scientists who wish to use the bones in their research. Improvements in identification techniques like ancient DNA may one day identify living relatives of these specimens, but until then many must wait in climate-controlled boxes, a mirror of the burial plots from where they were removed.