NAGPRA Case Studies

Sarah Grace Rogers

HARVARD AND THOUSANDS OF NATIVE REMAINS

Cara J. Chang, “Harvard Holds Human Remains of 19 Likely Enslaved Individuals, Thousands of Native
Americans, Draft Report Says,” The Harvard Crimson (2022), accessed June 30, 2022,
https://www.thecrimson.com/article/2022/6/1/draft-human-remains-report/.
Chang, Cara J. “Harvard Holds Human Remains of 19 Likely Enslaved Individuals, Thousands of Native
Americans, Draft Report Says.” The Harvard Crimson (2022). Accessed June 30, 2022.
https://www.thecrimson.com/article/2022/6/1/draft-human-remains-report/.
● Harvard holds the remains 19 likely-enslaved people and about 7000 Native Americans
● Unfinished draft by a committee focused on studying how to treat remains in collections–
released– calls on University to return enslaved to descendants and accelerate Native remains’
return
● Draft by the University’s Steering Committee on Human Remains in Harvard Museum
Collections (formed January 2021)
○ Creating after finding the Peabody Museum of Ethnology and Archaeology house
remains of slave-era individuals likely enslaved
● Draft dated April 19 and unfinalized
○ Irresponsible reporting to release an incomplete draft
● Example of a history of structural and institutional racism
● Apologies from University President Bacow for Harvard’s role in collection practices and
Peabody Director Pickering apologized for practices leading to this
○ What does an apology do? How do you right that wrong? Can you even right it?
■ Walk vs talk
○ Tasks given to steering committee:
■ Surveying all remains in collections
■ Developing new policies for stewardship of remains
■ Creating processes for memorials and returns
● “‘They were obtained under the violent and inhumane regimes of slavery and colonialism; they
represent the University’s engagement and complicity in these categorically immoral systems,’
the draft report says. ‘Moreover, we know that skeletal remains were utilized to promote spurious
and racist ideas of difference to confirm existing social hierarchies and structures.’”
● Museum holds more than 22000 individuals’ remains in total
○ What to do about those?
○ How do you prioritize?
● Restoring connections using provenance research, community consultation, DNA analysis–
define descendants
○ Social, emotional, family, or place-based connection to the individual
● Draft report calls for a space where human remains can be viewed and studied respectively and
for classes that explore historically problematic collecting
○ Does this include NAGPRA?
● Work toward finding a way to memorialize
○ Memorialization that would restore individuality
 ○ Is that their job? What do they owe?
● The report will be released publicly once complete
● Institutions that have historically collected like this and even today house them are trying to
repatriate, but how hard? Are they motivated? It is moving so slowly… Why?
○ Any ideas on how this could maybe move faster?

Gillian Brockell, “Harvard has remains of 7,000 Native Americans and enslaved people, leaked report
says,” The Washington Post (2022), accessed June 30, 2022,
https://www.washingtonpost.com/history/2022/06/02/harvard-human-remains-indigenous-enslaved/.
Brockell, Gillain. “Harvard has remains of 7,000 Native Americans and enslaved people, leaked report
says.” The Washington Post (2022). Accessed June 30, 2022.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/history/2022/06/02/harvard-human-remains-indigenous-enslave
d/.
● The Peabody has a committee responsible for returning remains
● 3000 of 10,000 returned in the past 32 years
○ Pickering (director) apologizes for slow pace
● Slavery and funds toward redressing the injustice
○ What about Native Americans?

BARRE MUSEUM AND SACRED OBJECTS

Jenna Kunze, “‘We’re going to make a way’: Wounded Knee Descendants and Relatives Travel to New
England to Ask for their Artifacts Back,” Native News Online (2022), accessed June 30, 2022,
https://nativenewsonline.net/sovereignty/we-re-going-to-make-a-way-wounded-knee-survivors-and-relati
ves-travel-to-new-england-to-ask-for-their-artifacts-back.
Kunze, Jenna. “‘We’re going to make a way’: Wounded Knee Descendants and Relatives Travel to New
England to Ask for their Artifacts Back.” Native News Online (2022). Accessed June 30, 2022.
https://nativenewsonline.net/sovereignty/we-re-going-to-make-a-way-wounded-knee-survivors-an
d-relatives-travel-to-new-england-to-ask-for-their-artifacts-back.
● Sioux leaders argue items in Barre Museum (Barre, Massachusetts) came off relatives from
Wounded Knee, South Dakota when killed by the US Cavalry in 1890
● Barre is hiring an “expert” to assess the objects during repatriation process
○ An “Expert” versus tribal leaders and elders?
● If deemed sacred = will be return
○ What is sacred?
● Following NAGPRA “as best we can” but don’t receive federal funds so not required by law
technically
○ What about institutions like that?
○ Ethical vs legal?
○ Doing something right vs being provided the resources to do so?
● Not antiques or artifacts; they’re belongings to relatives
○ What is sacred?
○ Who defines it and how?
○ Consultation with Native Americans
● Could take years to complete repatriation
 ○ How do you accelerate that?

Nancy Eve Cohen, “Barre Museum starts process of repatriation of sacred objects. Native leaders say
they're all sacred,” NHPR (2022), accessed June 30, 2022,
https://www.nhpr.org/2022-06-20/barre-museum-starts-process-of-repatriation-of-sacred-objects-native-le
aders-say-theyre-all-sacred.
Cohen, Nancy Eve. “Barre Museum starts process of repatriation of sacred objects. Native leaders say
they're all sacred.” NHPR (2022). Accessed June 30, 2022.
https://www.nhpr.org/2022-06-20/barre-museum-starts-process-of-repatriation-of-sacred-objects-
native-leaders-say-theyre-all-sacred.
● Lakota sacred artifacts and remains on display
a. Ceremonial pipes, medicine balls, human hair, dried umbilical cords taken by a worker
(Frank Root) clearing the field at Wounded Knee
i. Donated in 1892 to Barre
● April 6 meeting with leaders to make a plan for repatriation
● Talking with descendants
a. Spiritual releasing ceremony did not happen for these ancestors– they are stuck in limbo
b. Historical trauma
i. The need to start healing
ii. Moving forward will take forgiveness
iii. You can’t just forget
● Fuzzy histories and claims of ignorance about the history and what the museum holds
● Skepticism over whether the artifacts are real (no paper trail) and asserting “proper ownership”
for their return
a. Who do you believe? A legal side and an ethical side
● Repatriation process
a. Forensic anthropologist consultants to just authenticity of artifacts
i. Though descendents and tribe leaders can tell just by looking at them
b. Natives can tell but still need to verify authenticity
● First asked for items back in the 1990s but met resistance
a. The curator thought they were artworks and later apologized for not realizing
● 2007 Lakota representatives demanded items back but it was swept under the rug
● Failures from misunderstandings and competing interests
● Committee voted in 2019 to begin return process but COVID stalled it
● Getting closer– recognition that the items are identical to other Native items owned, supportive
state senator
● Will still take a lot of time

KENNEWICK MAN
Tasneem Raja, “A Long, Complicated Battle Over 9,000-Year-Old Bones Is Finally Over,” NPR (2016),
accessed June 30, 2022,
https://www.npr.org/sections/codeswitch/2016/05/05/476631934/a-long-complicated-battle-over-9-000-ye
ar-old-bones-is-finally-over.
Raja, Tasneem. “A Long, Complicated Battle Over 9,000-Year-Old Bones Is Finally Over.” NPR (2016).
Accessed June 30, 2022.
https://www.npr.org/sections/codeswitch/2016/05/05/476631934/a-long-complicated-battle-over-
9-000-year-old-bones-is-finally-over.
● US Army Corps of Engineers confirmed genetic link
● Finally able to bury him
● Many never get chance to study
● Science vs spirituality (research vs reverence for the dead)
○ Information vs respect
○ Some of the oldest, most complete human remains in North America ever
■ Reveal a LOT about migration and when humans were first in America and what
they were like, etc.
● The need to rethink the approach to culturally sensitive research??
● Danger in altering scientific methods to accommodate religious belief
○ Threats to cultural beliefs
○ Politics
○ Collision of science, ethics, and history
● Nature announced:
○ “Just weeks before Kennewick Man's remains were discovered, researchers working in
Alaska discovered a 10,000-year-old human skeleton. They notified local tribes and
quickly came to an agreement that allowed them to excavate and study the remains and
keep the tribes involved in the research.”
○ https://www.nature.com/articles/nature.2015.17797

Amanda Heidt, “Ancient DNA Boom Underlines a Need for Ethical Frameworks,” The Scientist (2022),
accessed June 30, 2022,
https://www.the-scientist.com/news-opinion/ancient-dna-boom-underlines-a-need-for-ethical-frameworks
-69645.
Heidt, Amanda. “Ancient DNA Boom Underlines a Need for Ethical Frameworks.” The Scientist (2022).
Accessed June 30, 2022.
https://www.the-scientist.com/news-opinion/ancient-dna-boom-underlines-a-need-for-ethical-fra
meworks-69645.
● 1996 discovery of Kennewick Man (Ancient One) in Columbia River (Washington State) dated at
8500 years old– 300 bones
● Sparked interest in peopling of Americas but started a dispute between researchers, US Army
Corps of Engineers, and at least four local Indigenous groups
○ Who could claim ownership of remains… and their information?
● Initially interpreted as early European settler (features, contextual evidence)
○ Undermining claims of Indigenous people that the remains belonged to them via
NAGPRA
○ Interim court ruling in 2004 denied repatriation under NAGPRA
○ Scientists were given continued access to bones = papers and a book
● Indigneous archaeologist Steeves’ mentor Rose was an expert called to analyze remains
 ○ And Rose said they resembled Great Plains Native American– no doubt based on time
and location
○ Power of archaeologists
● DNA tech solved the case 2015
○ Linking Kennewick man to Indigenous tribes
○ Complete genome sequencing from a hand bone
○ Returned to coalition of Columbia basin ribes
○ Burial in 2017
○ Damage that archaeologists and geneticists do
● What lengths do you go to to establish a connection? Where do you draw the line?
● The original archaeologist that recovered the remains (james Chatters) and interpreted as
European– mourns lost information that could have been gained– “burning the library”
● Power of ancient DNA (aDNA) in making connections with descendants
○ Ethical considerations
○ Research as extractive and exploitative
○ Where is the line drawn? What is necessary?
○ Opens a whole other field of research and questions
● Researchers argue for the need to update NAGPRA
○ First passed in 1990
○ But since them you have had 30 years of rapidly advancing technology that changes the
field a little
○ The law protects cultural and biological remains but does not specify what should be
done with the data or human information taken from sources like soil or gut microbes
○ Responsibility of researchers to do ethically-bound and responsible work
● Training to bridge gaps between fields- archaeology, anthropology, genetics, public history,
research, data
○ Instilling reverence and respect for ancient ancestors in emerging ancient DNA
scientists

Douglas Preston, “The Kennewick Man Finally Freed to Share His Secrets,” Smithsonian Magazine
(2014), accessed June 30, 2022,
https://www.smithsonianmag.com/history/kennewick-man-finally-freed-share-his-secrets-180952462/.
Preston, Douglas. “The Kennewick Man Finally Freed to Share His Secrets.” Smithsonian Magazine
(2014). Accessed June 30, 2022.
https://www.smithsonianmag.com/history/kennewick-man-finally-freed-share-his-secrets-180952
462/.
● Radiocarbon dating
● NAGPRA requires remains be studied to establish affiliation
○ If none = NAGPRA does not apply
● While legal processes underway– Kennewick was badly mishandled and stored in unsafe
conditions (swings in temperature and relative humidity) that did affect him
● Missing bones in the move
○ Later found but mystery never solved
 ● That time– the waiting period or liminal period– what is going on and what can we do to
ensure proper treatment and handling– rightful, ethical, etc?
● This need for information
○ “Kennewick Man’s osteobiography tells a tale of an eventful life, which a newer
radiocarbon analysis puts at having taken place 8,900 to 9,000 years ago. He was
a stocky, muscular man about 5 feet 7 inches tall, weighing about 160 pounds. He
was right-handed. His age at death was around 40.”
○ Gleaning as much information as we can BUT..
■ This article seems to focus more on the information rather than the
NAGPRA and ethics type discussion
Anne Amati and Ellyn DeMuynck, “Looking at the Numbers: Cultural Affiliation & NAGPRA,” Museum
of Anthropology, University of Denver, May 7, 2022, accessed July 3, 2022,
https://liberalarts.du.edu/anthropology-museum/news-events/all-articles/looking-numbers-cultural-affiliati
on-nagpra#:~:text=The%20National%20NAGPRA%20Program%20collects,have%20completed%20the
%20regulatory%20process.
Amati, Anne, and Ellyn DeMuynck. “Looking at the Numbers: Cultural Affiliation & NAGPRA.”
Museum of Anthropology, University of Denver, May 7, 2022. Accessed July 3, 2022.
https://liberalarts.du.edu/anthropology-museum/news-events/all-articles/looking-numbers-cultural-affiliati
on-nagpra#:~:text=The%20National%20NAGPRA%20Program%20collects,have%20completed%20the
%20regulatory%20process.

● According to the National NAGPRA Program, as of September 2020, about 42% of

199,933 human remains (or 83,076) reported under NAGPRA have completed regulatory
processes. Of the remains still pending, 95% have no cultural affiliation and 5% are
culturally affiliated but have not been published in a Notice of Inventory Completion.
94% of those without cultural affiliation have associated geographic information. 73% of
the pending remains without cultural affiliation have associated culture or age
information.
● The Southeastern United States region has the most Native American remains without
cultural affiliation still pending.
● It is rare that ancestral remains reported under NAGPRA have no associated information.