By David Malakoff
Collaborative storytelling is on display in the Northwest Coast Hall at the American Museum of Natural History in New York. The hall was renovated and reopened in 2022 after a five-year series of consultations with nine Native American nations from the Pacific Northwest. The exhibit explores how Northwest Coast peoples keep their languages and traditions alive despite a history of government repression. Photo Credit: F. Tuchiya / Renfro Design Group, Architectural Lighting Design
In the first few months of 2024, visitors to dozens of museums across the United States encountered some sudden changes. At the American Museum of Natural History in New York City, renowned for its extensive archaeological collections, curators had abruptly closed two large exhibit halls dedicated to Native American cultures. At the Field Museum in Chicago, the Cleveland Museum of Art, and other institutions, staff had used panels, tarps, and paper to conceal displays of Indigenous artifacts. At California’s Bowers Museum and various colleges and universities, display cases remained visible, but administrators had removed select artifacts. “Sorry for the inconvenience!” read a hand-written note tacked to one display. “We hope to re-open this exhibit at some point in the future.”
The closures, removals, and the note of uncertainty had a common cause: new U.S. government regulations that give Native American tribes a greater role in determining how some 1,400 museums, federal agencies, and educational institutions handle millions of Native American artifacts and at least 100,000 sets of human remains. One of the new rules that took effect in January 2024 requires institutions to obtain consent from tribes before displaying, allowing access to, or conducting research on certain types of artifacts—hence the scramble to hide exhibits while curators figured out how to proceed. But those highly-visible moves were just the tip of the iceberg when it comes to the potential impact of the regulations, which mark the government’s latest effort to improve implementation of a landmark 35-year-old law, the Native American Graves Protection and Repatriation Act (NAGPRA). Most importantly, say museums and Indigenous groups, the rules should accelerate efforts to accomplish one of NAGPRA’s main goals: righting an historic wrong by enabling tribes to more easily reclaim the remains of ancestors and cultural items—sacred objects, objects of cultural patrimony, and funerary objects—that were collected by archaeologists, anthropologists, and others over the past two centuries. The rules represent “an important part of laying the groundwork for the healing of our people,” said Deb Haaland, the Secretary of the Interior and a member of the Pueblo of Laguna, a federally-recognized tribe in New Mexico.
Since Congress enacted NAGPRA in 1990, the repatriation process has proved uneven and often painfully slow, straining relations between tribes and museums and sowing frustration on all sides. The rules could help ease those tensions, said Chip Colwell, a former curator at the Denver Museum of Nature & Science and the founding editor-in-chief of Sapiens magazine who has written extensively about NAGPRA. “I think what you are seeing is an attempt to course correct and find better ways forward,” he said. “To adhere not just to the letter of the law, but to embrace and realize the spirit of the law.”
But the regulations also raise thorny issues. They have rekindled concerns, for example, that some kinds of scholarly research will become infeasible. They include policy changes that could spark high-stakes legal battles. And they set tight deadlines for completing inventories and holding consultations that have museums, agencies, and tribes alike racing to find the staff, time, and money needed to comply. “My workload has just exploded since the rules came out,” said Martha “Marti” Only A Chief, the NAGPRA coordinator for the Pawnee Nation in Oklahoma. “All of these institutions are now getting ahold of us for consultations, which is great, but they should have done it a long time ago.”
This is an excerpt of New NAGPRA rules aim to simplify and accelerate compliance with the landmark law in American Archaeology, Year, volume, and issue information. Subscribe to read the full text.
FURTHER READING
Federal register outline of new regulations, Vol. 88, No. 238,
Report: Federal Agency Efforts and Challenges Repatriating Cultural Items, U.S. Government Accountability Office (Feb. 3, 2022)
Podcast Healing Through Restoration: The Native American Graves Repatriation Act, National Congress of American Indians (April 1, 2024),
Summary of the Department of the Interior revised regulations
