Constructing Indigenous Associations: Protocols of Recognition and NAGPRA Compliance

LOST AND FOUND: NAGPRA, Scattered Relics, and Restorative Methodologies

“…The database of “culturally unidentifiable” collections includes more than 124 thousand individuals, along with more than 916 thousand associated funerary objects 3 . The term “identification” in these inventories has a bit of a political twist, because NAGPRA locates only the remains of federally recognized tribes in the category of “culturally identifiable” (Bruchac 2010; Fine‐Dare 2002). The published NAGPRA inventories are only the tip of the iceberg, because thousands of objects in museums have not yet been identified or reported.…”

“…Cultural affiliation is expected to be determined by weighing a preponderance of the evidence—“geographical, kinship, biological, archaeological, linguistic, folklore, oral tradition, historical evidence, or other information or expert opinion”—to establish a “relationship of shared group identity” with a present‐day federally recognized Indian tribe 28 . This appears logical, but the limited construction of tribal identity as federal identity, under NAGPRA, erases some evidence of factual identity, because the remains of non–federally recognized tribal peoples must be enumerated in the oxymoronic category of “unidentifiable” and “culturally unaffiliated,” even if they are otherwise historically known and documented (Bruchac 2010; Hart 2003). As some scholars have observed, “It is ironic that, just when anthropological theory and Native peoples themselves are seeing cultural identity as fluid and contextually constructed, NAGPRA potentially insists that it be determined and fixed in time and space” (Nafziger and Dobkins 1999:87).…”

“…The NAGPRA reporting process has, in sum, imposed new forms of sorting, organized according to federal protocols, on top of the old, problematic archaeological sorting behaviors. Under NAGPRA, indigenous peoples and objects must now be sorted according to binary categories (i.e., associated–unassociated, federally recognized–non‐federally recognized, federal museum–private museum, and identifiable–unidentifiable) that imply simple choices, despite the on‐the‐ground political realities of complex tribal and collection histories (Bruchac 2010; Nafziger and Dobkins 1999). The NAGPRA enterprise itself has also become remarkably complex; many museums and tribes have created new offices and staff to facilitate processes of consultation, research, repatriation, reburial, and curation (Cash Cash 2001; National Museum of the American Indian 2004).…”