The Repatriation Movement Revisited

In 1997, Steve Russell, a member of the Cherokee Nation and currently a Judge and Associate Professor of Criminal Justice at Indiana University at Bloomington, was kind enough to give us some information on the history of the repatriation movement, based on his research for his MSJ. Today, Steve gives us an update on how the movement is faring.

The most well-known court case concerning NAGPRA issues must be the Kennewick Man controversy, where eight scientists sued to stop the repatriation of a 9,000 year old skeleton found on federal land in Washington State. What has been the impact of Kennewick and the other court cases?

Essentially, the disputes that were papered over in the compromises that resulted in the passage of NAGPRA have continued to simmer. Institutions that formerly argued that their "collections" contained so much wonderful information that reburial would be like bookburning suddenly decided that they had no idea what their collections contained, and therefore they could not meet NAGPRA's inventory requirements.

Scientists who tried in Congress to get age enacted as a proxy for race have continued the battle in court, with more success. The so-called Kennewick case is very important, because if the decision stands NAGPRA will be effectively gutted--it will turn into nothing more than what could have been accomplished with some modest adjustments to standing requirements in pre-NAGPRA law.

Meanwhile, Indian people who are not lawyers or professors are laboring under the misapprehension that NAGPRA solves the problem, that it does a bunch of things it does not do. The most common misunderstandings involve Indian remains on land that are not covered by NAGPRA. The provisions involving the sale of Indian remains, which do apply everywhere, still get violated. E-bay had enacted rules to comply with NAGPRA, but another case came up just this month.

With very few exceptions, Indians and scientists have been unable to work in harness together to put a stop to recreational grave looting. Most scientists still will not forswear grave looting for their purposes and Indians recognize no difference. My own take is that if scientists were willing to settle for salvage archeology on graves that have already been disturbed or are inevitably going to be, followed by a ceremonial reburial, there ought to be some common ground.

Lingering distrust makes that common ground hard to reach, even leaving aside that there are still scientists who accept no limits and Indians who accept no science.

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