More than 25 years have passed since the Native American Graves Protection and Repatriation Act (NAGPRA) became law in the United States. According to the National NAGPRA program, this law has resulted in the return of the remains of more than 50,000 individuals, 1.4 million funerary objects, and over 14,000 sacred objects/objects of cultural patrimony to Native American tribes (https://www.nps.gov/nagpra/FAQ/INDEX.HTM#How_many). It has also resulted in the publication of numerous books and articles investigating the myriad issues surrounding the law (Fine-Dare 2002; Killion 2008; Mihesuah 2000; Colwell 2017), including the conditions leading to its passage (Thomas 2000), its legislative background and history (Trope and Echo-Hawk 1992; Lovis et al. 2004), implementation (Anyon and Thornton 2003), and the responses of various stakeholders (Ayau and Tengan 2002; Preucel et al. 2003).
This entry seeks to give insight into the process of repatriation on the tribal side of the law. How...
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References
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Liebmann, M. (2018). Repatriation Acts: NAGPRA Repatriation in Tribal Practice. In: Encyclopedia of Global Archaeology. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-51726-1_1800-2
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