The Museum of Anthropology supports NAGPRA. Passed in 1990, the Native American Graves Protection and Repatriation Act is federal legislation that created a structure for the repatriation of Native American skeletal remains, funerary objects, sacred objects and objects of cultural patrimony in museum collections to Tribes to which they are related. The regulations sought to balance two indisputable goods: the first, the good of Tribes seeking to reclaim the remains of ancestors and funerary and sacred objects housed in museum collections; and the second, the good of scholars, museums and the larger public interested in and committed to the study of the human past and the preservation and care of objects that inform both on our shared human story and on the diverse cultures and people who inhabited our world hundreds, thousands, or tens of thousands of years ago.

The NAGPRA regulations placed obligations on museums – to inventory and report on their NAGPRA-relevant collections to Tribes and to the national NAGPRA office in the US Department of Interior, to consult with Tribes, and to work, wherever possible, to determine the “cultural affiliation” of collections in their keeping (cultural affiliation is defined as “a relationship of shared group identity which can be reasonably traced historically or prehistorically between a present day Indian tribe or Native Hawaiian organization and an identifiable earlier group,” and is established when a preponderance of multiple lines of evidence reasonably leads to such a conclusion (see http://www.nps.gov/history/nagpra/).

The NAGPRA regulations also recognize that not all human remains or NAGPRA-related objects can be affiliated with present day Tribes. Some may be too old or have too little information associated with them on where they came from or when they date to, and, in many cases, ancient or prehistoric archaeological “cultures” cannot be straightforwardly mapped onto contemporary or historically documented tribal groups and territories. New research and additional information may help to establish affiliation in the future, but until then such remains and objects belong to a category known as “cultural unidentifiable.” It is these “Cultural Unidentifiable Human Remains” (CUHR), particularly those from the state of Michigan, that have been the source of tensions and conflicts here at U-M. Who do they belong to? How does one decide? Should they be retained by museums or transferred to Tribes, and, if so, which Tribes? How should competing claims for them be reconciled when cultural affiliation cannot be determined?

In May 2010, new NAGPRA regulations specifically addressing CUHR went into effect. They establish criteria and procedures for making decisions about the “disposition” of culturally unidentifiable human remains. The regulations, which the University is now working to implement, no longer acknowledge the “good” of knowledge and research on the past; instead, they affirm that all NAGPRA-related human remains should be transferred to Tribes, and that the determination of recipient groups, in the absence of evidence for cultural affiliation, should be based on historic territories and geography.[1] The Museum and University have adhered to the NAGPRA regulations since they became law and will continue to do so; though I personally admit to sadness that research on the past is no longer considered a “good” under the expanded regulations, and regret the losses to knowledge that will inevitably occur as a result.

I recognize that this statement has been, thus far, a dry and scholarly treatise rather than an impassioned defense of science, archaeology, or the Museum of Anthropology. And I do this deliberately. This is a complicated topic and serious discussions and engagements among individuals with differing perspectives are not well served by polarization or impassioned protestations or yet another angry editorial. Especially in a university community that is dedicated to serious and respectful engagement with complex issues.

I am an archaeologist, and I come to my discipline with a profound respect for the rich diversity of the human past, and a commitment that the past is both knowable and worth knowing. My current research focuses on the past of southern India, in a period beginning some 3000 years ago. In India, as here, archaeology is controversial – as different stories of the past have been passionately debated (sometimes violently) and claimed by various nationalist and religious communities. Yet the archaeological record – the places, objects, plant and animal remains and, yes, the remains of human bodies – provides powerful and unique material evidence of the past that we can use to scientifically and rigorously assess these completing claims and examine how past societies came to be in different times and different places. This is, to me at least, a good and worthwhile thing to do. Much of our human story occurred before people wrote things down; many aspects of past cultures, including the taken for granted aspects of daily life, were never the subject of oral histories or religious knowledge passed down from parent to child over generations; and some people who lived in the past have been forgotten and have no descendents to speak for them. As such, archaeological evidence provides the essential way, indeed often the only way, to study important aspects of our human story over the many millennia of our history.

The Museum of Anthropology cares for more than three million archaeological and ethnographic objects and biological remains (plant, animal, and human) from all over the world. Approximately one hundredth of one percent of these fall under NAGPRA; the vast majority of our collections derive from habitation and productions sites, and many come from international contexts. However, despite their small numbers, the NAGPRA-related remains are nonetheless valuable for studying the human story, here in Michigan and in the others areas of the United States from which these materials derive.

So why do archaeologists study human remains and associated objects and evidence for behaviors related to how past humans treated their dead? And why is the public fascinated with these remains – as we see in the ongoing interest with the burial of the Egyptian boy king Tutankhamen, or the tomb of China’s first emperor Qin Shi Huangdi, with its famous terracotta warriors, or the remains of ancient Romans from Pompeii and Herculaneum?

There are many answers to these questions – related to the importance all cultures attribute to death and its social acknowledgment through ritual practice and to the fact that the skeletal remains provide unique evidence for documenting individual lives (something almost impossible to do from most archaeological evidence) – the illnesses or injuries individuals suffered, the work they performed, their relatedness to other individuals and descendent communities, their vulnerability or resistance to inherited diseases.

Ultimately of course, the solutions to current tensions over repatriation lie not in an “either/or” dichotomy but in the “with” and “and” of cooperation. To paraphrase Senator John McCain, one of the original sponsors of the 1990 legislation, we all have an interest in both respecting the rights of Native communities and in learning about the past. Collaborations among archaeologists and Tribes (including tribal archaeologists), taking place in many regions of our country (including Michigan), chart a way forward. Important examples include recent studies in Alaska in which tribal members provided DNA samples to anthropologists for a collaborative study of the biological relations of contemporary individuals and communities with the 10,300 year old remains of a man excavated in British Columbia; or a decision by the Southern Cheyenne Tribe that culturally affiliated funerary objects from a 19th century child burial should remain at the Smithsonian to – in the words of Gordon Yellowman, the Tribe’s NAGPRA delegate – educate “our children and future generations.”[2] I and others in the Museum of Anthropology look forward to tamping down the current drama and recriminations; to moving beyond the negative characterizations of individuals and groups that make it exceedingly difficult to openly acknowledge, understand, and address what are some very real and important differences; and to making our way forward in this important and difficult terrain in collaboration with Tribes from Michigan and the other 36 states from which the Museum currently holds NAGPRA-related human remains and objects.

[1] The explicit language establishing priorities for the the Disposition of Culturally Unidentifiable Human Remains and Associated Funerary Objects” establishes the following order: (i) the Indian tribe or Native Hawaiian organization from whose tribal land, at the time of excavation or removal, the human remains were removed; or (ii) The Indian Tribe or tribes that are recognized as aboriginal to the area from which the human remains were removed. Aboriginal occupation may be recognized as a final judgment of the Indian Claims Commission or the United States Court of Claims, or a treaty, Act of Congress, or Executive Order.”

[2] Clouse, Abby, 2009, The repatriation of a Southern Cheyenne burial and the contingencies of authenticity. Journal of Material Culture 14: 169-188.

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