The article below in the City Journal by anthropologist Elizabeth Weiss details harmful changes in interpreting the Native American Graves Protection and Repatriation Act (NAGPRA)—an act intended to return human remains and funerary objects to the Native American tribes to which they “belong”. The new interpretation appears to be that any archaeological object that can be claimed by Native Americans, even without convincing DNA or provenance connections, and on the basis of oral tradition alone, can be taken out of museums or hidden away.
I don’t have huge objections to the original act except that human remains should be allowed to be studied by scientists before being returned, and so long as the proper group of Native Americans can be identified. But the NAGPRA has expanded, as Weiss recounts in her report (click to read). The new interpretation is a recipe for the obfuscation of history on the grounds of, well, religion, and involves slippery claims what is “more likely than not”.
Here’s some of Elizabeth’s text:
NAGPRA was enacted to repatriate human remains and certain artifacts to modern tribes with direct ancestral links to past tribes. Descendancy, also referred to as lineal descent and cultural affiliation, was to be determined through a “preponderance of evidence” (a greater than 50 percent chance that the claim is true), using data from geography, kinship studies, biology, archaeology, anthropology, linguistics, folklore, and history. Also considered evidence was oral tradition coming from modern tribes. All evidence could be challenged and was given equal weight.
It’s fair to say that NAGPRA has been generous to Native American tribes by allowing oral tradition to be used as evidence of ancestral ties to the past, since oral tradition contains creation myths, supernatural tales, anachronisms, and miraculous events. Coming from other religions, such materials are usually not considered in legal cases. Thus, retired attorney James W. Springer and I, in our 2020 book Repatriation and Erasing the Past, pointed out that NAGPRA may be violating the Establishment Clause of the First Amendment to the U.S. Constitution: “Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion.” This clause is meant to prevent the federal government from favoring any specific faith; it is charged to treat all religious evidence equally.
Yet, even with the act’s long-standing generosity toward oral tradition, tribal repatriation activists and their allies were unsatisfied with NAGPRA and its terms allowing for the continued research, curation, and display of mostly unaffiliated human remains and artifacts. Nearly all affiliated human remains and related artifacts—by 2020, 91.5 percent of them—have already been repatriated. Critics have focused on the number of materials not yet repatriated, but these consist mainly of unaffiliated materials.
Dissatisfaction among repatriation activists had spurred occasional regulatory changes to NAGPRA. The latest, which went into effect this year, include the deletion of the term “culturally unidentified,” which means that all human remains and artifacts are now vulnerable to repatriation—even discoveries such as the 11,500-year-old Alaskan child named Sunrise Girl, whose DNA couldn’t be matched with DNA from any of the 167 ethnic groups the researchers tested. Sunrise Girl likely represents an individual from a long-gone Beringian tribe.
It would be a crime if “Sunrise Girl”, who represents inhabitants of North America not long after they arrived, were removed from study: click on the link to see what scientists concluded from the DNA of two ancient infants. Further “traditional knowledge,” which is supposed to be weighed in making these decisions, is now malleable!:
The summary of NAGPRA’s latest regulatory revision also states that “museums and Federal agencies must defer to the Native American traditional knowledge of lineal descendants, Indian Tribes, and Native Hawaiian organizations.” Previously, “oral tradition” was given the same weight as scientific and historical evidence; now, it trumps scientific and historical evidence. “Traditional knowledge” was not even mentioned in previous versions of NAGPRA. Native American traditional knowledge is a new term meant to encompass more than just oral tradition. According to the new regulations, Native American traditional knowledge, which is considered “expert opinion,” is defined as “covering a wide variety of information, including, but not limited to, cultural, ecological, linguistic, religious, scientific, societal, spiritual, and technical knowledge.” Further, “Native American traditional knowledge . . . is not required to be developed, sustained, and passed through time”—in other words, it can change at any time. And yet, because traditional knowledge is often “safeguarded or confidential,” its thus cannot be compared with previous decisions based such knowledge—in fact, it cannot be questioned at all.
This is of course all based on the premise that the wishes of Native Americans must be respected simply because they are indigenous people. But surely objects not connected with burial and whose provenance is unknown and can’t be proven, should simply be handed over to scientists for study and then and put in museums. After all, we are not talking about the Elgin Marbles! Unless those items were somehow stolen from Native Americans, what case can be made that they now can be repossessed by them? If you find an arrowhead or a pottery shard, what is the ethical principle that dictates that “traditional knowledge” should have any weight about what happens to the object?
But, as Dr. Weiss notes, this is going to empty out museum exhibits, and for really bizarre reasons:
We can expect bare display cases because some objects will be deemed too “spiritually powerful” to display. AMNH curators have already made similar decisions recently in the renovation of the Northwest Coast Hall. For instance, curators decided not to display a bird bone whistle because Nuxalk elders warned that the whistle could be used as a “summoning tool for supernatural beings.” And Haida tribal members instructed museum staff not to put a headdress on view or even handle the headdress because of the “danger” that they’d encounter—after all, one must “be wary of any object that incorporates human hair.” In other instances, absurd narratives, such as those found in the Northwest Coast Hall, will be taught to children as facts. Children will be told that objects have spirits, that Native Americans came from supernatural animals, and that shamans’ masks contain powers that one should fear.
Are we to cater to superstitions in this way? Are our children now to be subject to the pollution of the “other ways of knowing” trope?
But perhaps the most ludicrous part is this: Weiss’s speculation that contemporary art by Native Americans could be controlled by tribes rather than the artist, a possibility that could be counterproductive to the production of art by Native Americans:
Perhaps most ominously, NAGPRA may eventually extend its reach to art museums. Once all the natural history museum exhibits have been remodeled and the tribes have taken back most of the interesting objects, Native American repatriation activists will likely not be satisfied. New targets are sure to include art purchased from contemporary Native American artists. In a recent NAGPRA information session about the new regulations, art museum curators were told to consult with tribes over the display of art created by contemporary Native American artists that had been recently purchased for display. This may lead to art museum curators deciding to avoid NAGPRA hassles by ceasing to buy or display the works of Native American artists. This will harm the artists most; the museums will find other works.
The basis for these changes are obvious: a desire to cater to those perceived as underdogs, regardless of the strength of their claims. But this catering isn’t harmless, for it obfuscates our understanding of the history of North America.
Update: To see some of the results, click on this article, which a reader just sent me. I’ve used an archived link, so it’s free. I don’t have time to summarize it, but note that the claim that things like darts and canoes are “sacred items” doesn’t carry much water.
[ sigh.. ]
I’m tryin’ to take a hiatus from commenting, but I’d note here that museums take utmost care of the objects under their care/study.
Humidity, fire-resistance, UV, etc.
Seems that would be of interest in deciding a good location. Perhaps loans could be good – sometimes famous paintings go on loan, or a tour.
IDK.
If Native Americans want to erase themselves from museums and such, let them shoot themselves in the foot.
So one of the few glimpses and sources of information about indigenous cultures are now being removed from the public consciousness….and this is supposed to help indigenous peoples?
Again, I really, really don’t understand the Woke Left…as in what their goals really are and what they expect to accomplish through these stunts.
I will adhere to the mushhead hypothesis pending further evidence to the contrary….
I think the constant re-litigating the past to unearth (pun intended) injustices and creating more grievances is both a waste of time and establishing yet another victim class.
There is no future in these endeavors. None at all.
That’s why we call the academic version “Grievance Studies”. Since there is no end to the inequities that can be “studied”, especially in the past, the field is a rich one. As such, it has a great future, academically speaking; and is also exactly how the
Grievance approach seizes beachheads in STEM-adjacent departments.
I just think about the fact that Indians were so much a part of culture when I grew up. On TV, in movies, on coins, even the Y Indian Guides. Granted not every depiction was favorable, we knew what had happened to the Indians in the past. Slowly they are being effaced from our culture. Does that really help?
Yep DrB. If I go to a museum to find out about the history of North America, I will have to conclude that it started with discovery of blank lands and forests by white European explorers in the 16th and 17th centuries. No colonizing, no conquering of tribes…just settling of a frontier. What rot!
This is not quite on topic-close, but please indulge me…Can anyone elaborate on this?
Note that it’s only an excerpt from an upcoming article…so will take about 2 minutes to read. Alas I don’t have a subscription to Palladium, and have so many subscriptions to so many things….
https://letter.palladiummag.com/p/early-article-the-native-american
Or for that matter, this really nauseating poster? from an American university? Which is as rabidly Jew-hating except for a couple of things….
https://twitter.com/ShelleyGldschmt/status/1752937878995476877
wow. That is so bananas.
Woke is so Khmer Rouge.
D.A.
NYC
I hope the canoes didn’t carry much water
never was given my share of the Sutton Hoo treasures.
You never had the option of going to A&E, rather than going to the hospital’s Accounting department, giving your credit-card number (or medical insurance account number), being credit checked, then going to examination and/ or treatment departments if you passed the credit check?
Having that option was part of your share of Sutton Hoo.
There is a concept in most country’s accounting called “general taxation”, where taxes taken under most named accounting rules (e.g., “Road fund Tax”) go into the general pot of funding and are then spent on the “general good” (e.g., the NHS, or (regardless of whether or not you’re a pacifist) “defence”).
The alternative, “hypothecation”, is applying “Road Fund Tax” to solely pothole repair and motorway building, is at best horribly complicated (and therefore expensive) and leaves no room for funding novel needs (e.g., research into contactless charging of electric vehicles from photovoltaic cells built into roadways). I don’t think there has ever been a state which depends on hypothecated taxation.
Every time I see a motorist whinging about bicyclists using the roads (instead of the pavements) because “bloody cyclists don’t pay Road Tax”, I’m listening to (and ignoring) someone who, at best, doesn’t understand general taxation versus hypothecation. Sorry, but it’s a pet annoyance of mine, as both a bike user and car owner.
(American tax rules may use different names for similar concepts. But they’ll have those concepts. And those misunderstandings.)
Another bipartisan ailment in a fading republic. The law has been in effect for decades? Well, we of the “expert” bureaucratic class decided it means this now. Shut up and comply. If you don’t like it, we’ll see you in court.
What you can’t get done through legislation, accomplish by diktat. Nice strategy—until it turns on you.
I’d say it’s more an example of “regulatory capture” of the management of (existing) regulations by one of the affected groups.
I spent over 30 years fighting to nullify the regualtory capture of the management of Health and Safety in the offshore oil industry, by the oil companies. It killed people, regularly. (Which was it’s job, through the medium of improving profit margins.)
NAGPRA was already hugely ripe for legal challenge under the establishment clause. Now they’ve made it even more so. The problem I see is that no museum is going to want to be the litigant because of the opprobrium they’d suffer. So probably only a small group of academic archaeologists or cultural anthropologists (if there are any of the latter who haven’t yet drunk the kool-aid) would be a viable litigants, arguing that their research prospects and careers have been effectively destroyed by this legislation.
Is it Native American groups themselves who are pushing for this expansion of terms into non-burial items? If so, do they really *want* all this stuff? Do they have a plan for what they want to do with it? Do they actually care what happens to it? Or is it purely driven by not wanting whitey to have it?
There is probably a market for it. Get it back from the museums (for free) and they can turn a tidy profit selling it privately to oligarchs or sheiks who collect antiquities. They might be disappointed at the price it actually fetches though. The stuff made before the Europeans brought steel tools, the potter’s wheel, and glass beads is pretty crude. There is no bronze, remember. How many flint arrowheads do you really need to look at? And most of its “spiritual” value lies in the present-day claims of the people whose ancestors made it. It doesn’t travel well. We’re not talking Mesopotamia.
In the short term, the flow of these artifacts back to the Reserves will generate claims for money to build suitable repositories to honour them properly. We might not get to see them but by God we are going to pay for them.
Considering the frequent reports of continuing looting of Mesopotamian archaeological sites in Iraq/ Syria/ Kurdistan, which must be playing into, eventually, some collectors market – that may not be the best analogy to use.
Is there no market at all for, say, pre-Colombian “pretty crude … beads”?
I heard, a couple of years ago, of a Mexican site which was looted between it’s first discovery, recording and publication, and the second visit (for planned, detailed recording, and potentially sampling). The looting visit included at an absolute minimum a 2-hour long cave dive with all the associated logistics ᴺᵒᵗᵉ. But the looters found someone to do it. Which implies a “collector” market to fund it.
Indiana Jones, a hurricane lamp, two bits of stringy rope and a miraculous bullwhip, it ain’t.
Even your basic Mesopotamian looting task involves putting diesel into a borrowed/ hired JCB (EN_UK ; EN_US would probably be something like “a backhoe”) to do a month’s worth of digging in one visit.
It perplexes me who the market for “Pre-Colombian artefacts” is. Sheikhs and Mesopotamian/ Middle Eastern goods, I can get. Who’s buying the (often faked) Pre-Colombian stuff? Lion-hunting Ohio dentists?
~~~~~~~~~~~~
ᴺᵒᵗᵉ Order 100kg equipment, manhandled through a kilometre of switchbacking cave passage ; “sherpas” to do the manhandling; a diver to do the dive (who trusts the “sherpas” to not kill him (or her) by damaging the diving kit on the haul). That last category – the diver – is a very limited talent pool – under a thousand, globally. Yet someone from the talent pool chose to do it – presumably for gain. And has kept quiet about it since.
Putting artifacts from any culture into a museum, Native or otherwise, is about EDUCATION. It’s so people can go look at these things & LEARN about cultures & people other than their own. Returning these things doesn’t do any good for anyone. It’s just virtue signaling. There’s an awful lot of that nowadays & nobody learns a damn thing from virtue signaling.
Very well said, Polly.
The witnesses of the virtue signalling learn how virtuous the signaller wishes to appear. Regardless of their actual virtues or achievements. And mentioning or investigating those actual virtues is likely arouse intense retribution from the signaller – most likely because they know their reality doesn’t match the signals they advertise.
See also, the frequent concept in evolution/ adaptation studies of an “honest signal” versus a “dishonest signal”. A topic that really upsets “virtue signallers”.
First, Elizabeth Weiss is not a legitimate player in these issues – the lawyer she uses doesn’t understand Indian law. Second, NAGPRA does not prevent research or exhibits – its merely requires consent from the sovereign Native Nations who are the owners of the items and Native bodies. NAGPRA declares that institutions do not own the hundreds of thousands of Native bodies stolen from graves, their burial belongings, and other sacred and cultural items. These objects are community property or community held and science and commercial interests do not have legitimate or legal ownership of Native bodies and cultural items. NAGPRA is not a science issue – its a human rights issue. NAGPRA has actually done more to provide funding and resources for research because it requires institutions to bring the legitimate holders and experts of Native cultural heritage to the table – the Native Peoples themselves.
A couple of problems with this:
1. Bodies, and items associated with burials, might be easy to identify as such, but “other sacred and cultural items” sounds a conveniently capacious term to encompass just about anything and everything one pleases. What, after all, would not be a “cultural item”?
2. Can “the sovereign Native Nations who are the owners of the items and Native bodies” always been identified with reasonable certainty? I could be wrong, but I get the impression that most of the claims of ownership are simply *asserted*, and when it comes to objects that are more than, say, a thousand years ago, continuity of cultural identification between the makers and anyone alive today seems, on the face of it, virtually impossible to trace, given the fluid and ever-shifting boundaries between Native American polities, and the shifting pattern of alliances and enmities between different nations.