Biology Reference
In-Depth Information
NAGPRA created sweeping changes for how Native American remains are studied in the
United States. 16 However, it has had some beneficial and negative consequences for both
Native American tribes and anthropologists. Benefits included the inventory of collections
that had never previously been studied. The law also helped to forge new relationships
between some anthropologists and Native American tribes ( Buikstra, 2006c ). However,
a major disadvantage has been the nonregulation of the regulators, those individuals charged
with enforcing the law. In many cases, osteologists or former collections curators have been
discouraged from carrying out their duties, and for some museums and universities, this has
resulted in an end to skeletal biology programs ( White et al., 2012 ).
Previously, only recognized tribes that could demonstrate an affiliation to remains or
mortuary goods were authorized to claim them. In 2010 new regulations were added (by
the Department of the Interior) regarding culturally unidentified remains, stating that any
tribe could claim unidentified remains. Museums, scientists, and professional organizations
have protested en masse, stating (1) that these new regulations allow any tribe to claim mate-
rials, even those materials that are not from the geographic ancestral lands of the tribe;
(2) that conceivably one tribe could claim all unidentified materials; (3) that tribes not feder-
ally recognized are preempted, meaning that their rightful materials may be claimed by
another tribe; (4) that the ambiguity of the new regulations will result in vast expense;
(5) that it is possible that some unidentified materials would be identified in the future given
new technologies; (6) that there are constitutionality issues; and (7) that the loss to humanity
and future posterity of the information we could gain from such materials (i.e., via stable
isotope analysis) is immeasurable (see Bell, 2010; Gover and Samper, 2010; Smith et al., 2010 ).
Prior to these new regulations, the discovery of a skeleton in Washington State in 1996
(later dubbed “Kennewick Man”) that was dated to be older than 9000 years caused contro-
versy when several tribes made a claim to the remains under NAGPRA but anthropologists
raised doubts about Kennewick Man's cultural affiliation due to his great antiquity ( Owsley
and Jantz, in press ). Both anthropologists and tribes filed subsequent lawsuits, with the court
deciding that there would be no repatriation since the remains were not Native American as
defined by NAGPRA ( White et al., 2012 ). However, access to the remains is controlled by the
Army Corps of Engineers (ACE) (the landowner of the property where Kennewick Man was
found) and the ACE has not yet been released from the lawsuit, so the remains cannot
currently be studied; and future prospects are uncertain even once litigation has ended
(R. Jantz, personal communication, 2012). The great importance of a skeleton such as
Kennewick Man is in the ability to answer questions about lifestyle, behavior, quality of
life, diet, health, geolocation, and so on from an individual who lived at the dawn of the
peopling of the Americas. A rare skeleton such as this should be available for study by qual-
ified scientists to reveal unique information about our past.
Overall, NAGPRA has exerted a great deal of pressure on biological anthropology and it
was feared by many researchers that it would be the end of bioarchaeology in the United
States. However, a massive effort ensued to collect as much data as possible from Native
American skeletal series, whichwas facilitated by the standardized data collection procedures
16 While this discussion focuses on a specific law in the U.S., the lessons learned (i.e., communication with
descendant communities/the public, improved skeletal study/interpretation, and the irreplaceable nature
of human skeletal remains) are germane for prehistoric skeletal study in all countries (see Buikstra, 2006c ).
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