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1990 - Native American Graves Protection and Repatriation Act
New Mexico is the home to the following tribes and pueblos or members of: Ute Mountain Ute Tribe; Southern Ute Tribe; Jicarilla Apache Tribe; Mescalero Apache Tribe; Pueblo of Zuni; Ysleta del Sur Pueblo (El Paso Texas); Navajo tribe (Alamo, Canoncito, Ramah chapter parcels): Pueblo of Taos; Pueblo of Picuris; Pueblo of San Juan; Pueblo of Santa Clara; Pueblo of Nambe; Pueblo of San Ildefonso; Pueblo of Pajoaque; Pueblo of Tesuque; Pueblo of Cochiti; Pueblo of Santo Domingo; Pueblo of Jemez; Pueblo of Zia; Pueblo of Santa Ana; Pueblo of San Felipe; Pueblo of Sandia; Pueblo of Isleta; Pueblo of Laguna; and the Pueblo of Acoma as well as to the various ancestors of these people. New Mexico also contains an enormous array of prehistoric and historic Native American cultural sites. The disturbance, vandalism, and theft from prehistoric and historic cultural sites around the world are a historic phenomenon. The looting of these sites for profit, scientific edification and museum display is perhaps best known in Egypt, South and Central America and in the American Southwest, but it is a global phenomenon.
The Native American Graves Protection and Repatriation Act (NAGPRA) is a federal law, passed by Congress in 1990, that requires federally funded institutions to return human remains and objects found in Indian graves to their original owners. It provides a similar remedy for remains and grave goods found in the future on federal or tribal lands. It makes the sale of illegally obtained grave materials a federal crime. It also permits tribes to request the return of objects which, though they were legally acquired by museums or other institutions, are indispensable to a tribe, forming part of its "cultural patrimony." The term "Native American" in the law also covers Native Hawaiians. Federally funded institutions that possess Indian remains and grave goods were given five years--until 1995--to inventory them and decide whose they are. The institutions were then obliged to offer them back to the tribes.
The law goes into some detail about how excavated materials can be linked with the correct tribe. First priority goes to lineal descendants of the disinterred person. Second priority goes to tribes that are known to have owned the articles in question. Third priority goes to the tribe on whose land the grave was found. Fourth priority goes to the tribe that formerly inhabited the grave site. If two tribes claim the same item, the one with the closest "cultural affiliation" should be awarded ownership. "Cultural affiliation" is legally defined as follows:
"cultural affiliation" means that there is a relationship of shared group identity which can be reasonably traced historically or prehistorically between a present day Indian tribe or Native Hawaiian and an identifiable earlier group--cultural affiliation by a preponderance of the evidence based upon geographical, kinship, biological, archaeological, anthropological, linguistic, folkloric, oral traditional, historical, or other relevant information or expert opinion.
The National Park Service has organized a seven-member Native American Graves Protection Review Committee to monitor and review the implementation of the law.
The culmination of a series of federal laws over the past century dealing with Native American remains and cultural resources and archaeological resources, the 1990 NAGPRA legislation really represented a reversal in many respects in the way that our nation views native human remains. At the turn of the century Congress enacted the Antiquities Act of 1906. This act was intended to protect the nation's cultural resources--archaeological resources. What the act did in reality, however, was to convert native dead who were interred on public lands into “federal property” and “archaeological resources.” The Antiquities Act permitted qualified entities to dig up these “resources” for permanent preservation in a public museum with a federal permit. This practice was a complete reversal of the common law, which said that there is no property interest in a human being--a deceased human being. The Antiquities Act of 1906 led to the excavation of untold thousands of Native people on federal lands. The remains and attendant artifacts were then shipped to museums across the country for permanent preservation.
In order to protect and repatriate skeletal remains and funerary objects in the United States, the Native American Graves Protection and Repatriation Act encompasses three broad areas--definitions, inventory of collections, and archaeological excavations. It covers human remains, funerary objects, sacred objects, and materials of cultural patrimony. The Act also provides for grants to be available for tribes and museums in order to implement the Act.
Sources Used:
http://groups.msn.com/THEDRUM/nativeamericangravesprotectionandrepatriationact.msnw
http://www.pbs.org/wotp/nagpra/
http://www.cr.nps.gov/nagpra/
Mihesuah, Devon A., ed. Repatriation Reader: Who Owns American Indian Remains. Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 2000.
http://archnet.asu.edu/Topical/CRM/USdocs/nagpra14.htm
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