More Than One Mask: The Context of NAGPRA for Museums and Tribes

Abstract

INTRODUCTION\nThe Native American Graves Protection and Repatriation Act (NAGPRA) has fundamentally changed the relationship between museums and tribal peoples. Since 1990, thousands of human remains and funerary objects and hundreds of sacred objects and objects of cultural patrimony have been repatriated to tribes. Human remains and funerary objects have been reburied, and sacred objects and objects of cultural patrimony have been returned to tribal centers and/or reincorporated into traditional ceremonies. Tribes and museums have also made significant organizational and cultural adjustments in order to incorporate the repatriation law into their activities, including integrating extensive consultation efforts and comprehensive reviews of documentation into their operations. After seventeen years of NAGPRA, many in the museum and tribal worlds have become proficient in the “nuts and bolts” of the law and embraced the positive changes it has brought about. Many museum and tribal staff have learned to live with the law’s ambiguities, inadequacies, or as yet undeveloped sections; although others, mainly in the tribal world, are more critical of NAGPRA’s ambiguities and frustrated with the length of the repatriation process.\nIn many ways, the tribal and museum experience of implementing NAGPRA has also highlighted an often unrecognized commonality between these two communities: tribes and museums are constantly changing in terms of leadership, membership, funding, and institutional and programmatic priorities.

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