Earlier this month, the National Park Service (NPS) awarded just over $3 million in grants to 13 Native American tribes and 21 American institutions to facilitate the repatriation of ancestral remains and cultural objects currently held in collections and archives across the country. This marks the first round of funding since the Native American Graves Protection and Repatriation Act (NAGPRA) adopted major updates to its original 1990 legislation in mid-January, clarifying and streamlining repatriation processes that have been stalled for the past three decades.
The NPS awarded repatriation grants to the Colorado Seminary, the Chickasaw Nation, Vassar College, Hartwick College, and the Alaskan village of Galena to support the transportation and respectful reinterment of 137 ancestors, 12 funerary objects, and 54 cultural objects. The Chickasaw Nation received over $15,000 so that its team of eight can physically retrieve and rebury 130 Chickasaw ancestors held in the repositories of the University of Alabama’s Office of Archaeological Research in Moundville, Alabama.
A total of 34 consultation grants were administered to 11 other tribes and 19 museums and colleges to fund the documentation, site-specific research, collections auditing, travel expenses, and logistical costs. Outlined in the updated NAGPRA guidelines, institutions “must defer to Native American traditional knowledge of lineal descendants, Indian Tribes, and Native Hawaiian organizations” as these procedures for repatriation unfold.
This closes a loophole in the previous version of the legislation stipulating that Indigenous people prove their relation to ancestral remains and cultural objects, yet allowed institutions to deem them “culturally unidentifiable.” Now, with five-to-six-figure grants covering associated costs for consultations, auditing, and research, tribes and collections are closer to determining the most appropriate and sensitive modes of repatriation.
Allotted the highest funding amount of $400,000 through four separate grants, the Qawalangin Tribe of Unalaska is prepared to commence consultation processes with Bryn Mawr College, the University of Alaska Fairbanks’s Museum of the North, and the Peabody Museum of Archaeology and Ethnology at Harvard University in order to repatriate remains from over 185 ancestors and obtain institutional commitment to return cultural objects. The Qawalangin Tribe will also create a comprehensive NAGPRA Engagement manual to guide culturally relevant dialogue throughout these consultations.
