31 Years of NAGPRA: Evaluating the Restitution of Native American Ancestral Remains and Belongings

By Christopher Zheng.

Whether it is land stolen under coercive treaties or looted belongings displayed in museums, the United States’ relationship with Native American tribes has long been defined by bad faith. In July of last year, however, the Supreme Court took a step towards reckoning a long history of injustice by honoring a treaty with the Muscogee Nation, formally recognizing half of the land in Oklahoma as tribal land.^[1] This, along with recent calls to reexamine mascots, flags, and statues depicting Indigenous peoples,^[2] demonstrates a shift towards respecting the limited sovereignty of tribal governments and, by extension, their cultural footprint in modern America.

However, much work beyond awareness needs to be done. Many of the Native American belongings sitting inside museums and galleries today were improperly acquired. Much of this is due to the fact that, after the Civil War, the American government funded scientists and anthropologists to collect millions of Native religious and cultural items and ancestral remains, which were often taken from tribes by fraud, compulsion, or robbery.^[3] Additionally, tribes have long found little legal protection for preserving their cultural land and practices. In 1988, for instance, the Supreme Court in Lyng v. Northwest Indian Cemetery Protection Association held that the American Indian Religious Freedom Act (“AIRFA”) could not prevent a logging company from building a road through an area used for native religious rites.^[4] In response to Lyng and its profound implications on tribal sovereignty, Congress passed a bill two years later aimed at guaranteeing communication between the federal government and tribes for the protection and repatriation of Native cultural heritage belongings and ancestral remains.^[5] This article seeks to explore how effective that law has been in achieving that goal.

The Native American Graves and Repatriation Act (NAGPRA)