Cultivating Ethical Practices for Implementing The Native American Graves Protection and Repatriation Act

Indiana University, Bloomington IN

Investigators

Abstract

The Native American Graves Protection and Repatriation Act (NAGPRA, 43 CFR 10) enacted by Congress in 1990 establishes the rights of federally recognized U.S. tribes to ascertain the whereabouts of culturally affiliated ancestral human remains, funerary objects, sacred objects, and objects of cultural patrimony, and to request repatriation of these items. The law requires scientists in the archaeological, anthropological and museum sciences to consult with tribes on matter of research, documentation, and repatriation. Even after 20 years scientists in many cases remain unsure how best to proceed in order to comply with the regulations and still use materials subject to NAGPRA in research. This project will build a NAGPRA training toolkit by bringing interdisciplinary stakeholders together to study training and build curriculum. During the initial phase of the project funded by the award the team will conduct a survey to assess current training, will develop a database of contact information and extant training materials, produce a white paper on the alignment of NAGPRA requirements with the Code of Conduct of the Register of Professional Archaeologists, distribute a newsletter to tribal entities, colleges, and cultural resource personnel, and conduct the first of several planned Collegium meetings at which faculty, consultants, and students will participate in open and equitable dialogue and joint research to ascertain how the ethics of their fields of study are taught and learned with respect to NAGPRA including direct exposure in the classroom as part of undergraduate or graduate coursework, and through mentorship of students via faculty research committees, advising, and lab or field supervision and instruction. NAGPRA mandates interpolating multiple ways of knowing about peoples of the past. Implementation of NAGPRA has brought scientists into close interaction with descendent communities who may reckon, view, and understand their past in ways that seem at odds with the epistemologies of Western science. Indigenous worldviews may use origin narratives, oral histories, cosmologies, and cultural traditions as sources of knowledge about the past. The ethical principles that come to play with NAGPRA require increased understanding and appreciation of multiple ways of knowing by both scientists and adherents to alternative views. Hence, analyzing how scientists learn about and cope with NAGPRA targets core values and philosophies held by scientists and juxtaposes these with indigenous impressions both about the past and about what scientists do. The collegium convened to study and improve on training materials takes a practical problem and uses it to address fundamental distinctions made between scientific and alternative world-views.