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188 N NAGPRA. NAGPRA is the acronym for the Native American Graves Protection and Repatriation Act. Enacted on November 16, 1990, by Congress (HR 5237, PL 101-601, 43 CFR 10.9), and signed into law by President George H. W. Bush, NAGPRA requires consent from Native Americans before any type of scientific examination of human remains discovered on federal lands can take place. Among other aspects of this singularly important federal legislation, NAGPRA also mandates that “any institution or State or local government agency,” including higher learning, though excepting the Smithsonian Institution, that receives federal funds and owns or controls Native American “cultural items” must “compile an inventory,” so that their “geographical and cultural affiliations(s)” can be determined; the latter clause thereby allowed presumed indigenous owners to initiate steps to request their “expeditious return.” The start-up date for what is most often called “repatriation” was November 16, 1993. Although passage of this landmark legislation required a seven-member review and monitoring committee, non-Indian members continue to remain in the majority. Even so, NAGPRA grants this committee legislative teeth to protect against the sort of illegal trafficking in archaeological goods that occurred with the well-publicized vandalism of a Native American early historical cemetery on the Slack Farm in northern Kentucky during the 1960s—the desecration of 650 graves spread across forty acres, reportedly leaving the burial site to resemble a Civil War battlefield in the aftermath of looting. Then following a protest demonstration led by the American Indian Movement, there were intense lobbying efforts made by other Native Americans and non-Indian supporters against the Smithsonian Institution, which at the time reportedly retained more than 18,500 boxes of Indian bones and burials in storage in the nation’s capital. Out of this came passage of NAGPRA by Congress, nearly thirty years in fact after similar legislation intended to protect non-Indian historic remains under the Historic Preservation Act of 1966 (US Code 80 Stat. 933).1 As for the impact of NAGPRA, its effect remains nothing short of profound and spectacular for Native Americans while simultaneously being irksome for archaeologists . Before considering this issue, some examples of its workings in the Great Basin provide a useful backdrop. Following a report in the Federal Register (vol. 62, no. 48) regarding the discovery of human remains in Smith Valley, Nevada, dated March 12, 1997, for example, after learning those skeletal parts had been “donated” to the University of Nevada Physical Anthropology Laboratory in Las Vegas, the Yerington Paiute Tribe was duly contacted. Marlin Thompson, the Northern Paiute NAGPRA-appointed representative, hence authorized to examine and then retrieve such remains, claimed them on behalf of this federally recognized tribe, reburying them in their off-reservation cemetery in Smith Valley, after a prayer by Yerington Paiute tribal elders, sisters Ida Mae Valdez and Lillus Richardson. n a g p r a 189 Another example of the workings of NAGPRA among Great Basin Indians can be given. Following the posting on November 13, 2000, of news of two skeletons originally uncovered in 1949 near Fallon in Churchill County, Nevada, that wound up in the University of Denver’s Museum of Anthropology, in compliance with the federal ruling that “sacred objects and objects of cultural patrimony shall be expeditiously returned . . . no later than ninety days after the date on which the scientific study is completed” (USC 3002, sec. 3), ownership of those human remains was claimed by not one but four separate contemporary sovereignties: the Fallon Shoshone-Paiute Tribe, the Pyramid Lake Tribe (Northern Paiute), the Reno-Sparks Indian Colony (Northern Paiute and Washoe), and the Walker River Paiute Reservation Tribe (Northern Paiute and Shoshone). Consultations between various NAGPRA coordinators and the curator of collections at the University of Denver continue regarding repatriation in this as yet unresolved case. In yet another example, Barker and Pinto (1994, 17) discuss the double-sided nature of NAGPRA, which for their profession of archaeology otherwise committed to scientific research in Great Basin Indian studies represents both a potential boon and a hindrance. Illustrating the conflict with the discovery of a buried infant during the installation of a pipeline near Elko, Nevada, they write that although the Western Shoshone immediately claimed the infant as their own—and immediately announced their intention to rebury the body through repatriation—most archaeologists , on the other hand, believe that since burial dates were between 2830 and 3100 BP, if only on the basis of the Lamb Hypothesis about the...
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