The Great Laboratory of Humanity by Maria Teresa Milicia (ed.)

Author:Maria Teresa Milicia (ed.) [Milicia, Maria Teresa]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Nonfiction, History
ISBN: 9788854952133
Publisher: CLEUP
Published: 2020-04-27T04:00:00+00:00

Figure 1. Anthropologist Bridget Ambler displays a McElmo Black-on-White bowl (i.d. 78.2.1579) dated circa A.D. 1075-1225 (Montezuma County, Colorado) and curated in the U.S. Bureau of Land Management Anasazi Heritage Center (AHC), Dolores, Colorado. Drill holes indicate that the heavily-used bowl was repaired. The designs have been identified by Puebloan indigenous descendants as sunflowers. According to Ambler, Supervisory Museum Curator of the AHC, every item in the Center museum is subject to NAGPRA. For instance, Native Americans could at any time “provide evidence to show this [bowl] is a sacred object used for an ongoing ceremony, or an object of cultural patrimony.” Photo by K. Fine-Dare, 2014.

This self-reflective and historically oriented work is also evident in archaeological theory and practice, which has softened its processualist orientation grounded in evolutionary theory. To provide one example, historical ecological archaeology is challenging approaches that deny human agency by giving the strongest explanatory force to uncontrollable forces of presumed natural history (see Balée and Erickson 2006.) The archaeology of memory is also developing as a fascinating intersectional and dialogical arena (Beisaw 2010; Van Dyke and Alcock 2003).

Finally, as part of a National Science Foundation initiative regarding ethics in STEM (science, technology, engineering, mathematics) fields, a three-year “Learning NAGPRA” project was created in 2013 to study ways that archaeology and museum studies programs around the U.S. have been including NAGPRA and other Native American rights materials within their coursework and to what effects.51

Native American Engagement

Although growing numbers of Native Americans are involved in policy and compliance, many still face challenges from those suspicious of “anthros” and/or those who disapprove spiritually of working with the dead. Nevertheless, many more and better trained Native Americans are using the law to help their communities (see Hemenway 2013).

In April of 2016, the School of Advanced Research in Santa Fe, New Mexico, held four panel discussions on the topic of “Forging New Landscapes in Cultural Stewardship and Repatriation.” During one of the panels the important suggestion was made that we need more information not only about the tangible return of human remains and cultural objects, but also, and perhaps more importantly, the intangible consequences of NAGPRA entailed in the “emotional and intellectual journeys” taken by indigenous peoples as they seek justice through the repatriation process (Madeson 2016). Native American intellectuals, activists, attorneys, artists, anthropologists, and scientists who started the repatriation process rolling continue to find ways to expand and enrich the realms of action and inquiry to which they contribute, regardless of the constraints of the legal systems that build the platforms on which quests for reparations, repatriation, and ongoing public education take place.

International Conversations

Although NAGPRA does not apply outside of North America, its influence can be felt in a variety of locations throughout the world. At the very least, discussion of the North American NAGPRA case in international contexts highlights the range of cross-cultural differences regarding concepts such as indigeneity, heritage, repatriation, property, art, and human rights. Perhaps the most influential and iconic statement regarding international indigenous rights is

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