1/ The Native American Graves Protection and Repatriation Act requires certain institutions that hold Indigenous remains in their collections to repatriate them to the tribes they belong to. But a loophole allows Texas institutions to flout the law. https://www.texasobserver.org/native-american-graves-protection-repatriation-act-texas/
2/ NAGPRA requires institutions to work with federally recognized tribes to repatriate remains. But therein lies the rub: In Texas, many of the remains belong to tribes that are not federally recognized, which means that federal law doesn’t apply to them. https://www.texasobserver.org/native-american-graves-protection-repatriation-act-texas/
3/ That means members of tribes in Texas are left to the whim and goodwill of university and museum curators. https://www.texasobserver.org/native-american-graves-protection-repatriation-act-texas/
4/ At the federal level, the vast majority of human remains haven’t been returned. Instead, collections have been moved to climate-controlled facilities as institutions try to identify remains and tribes struggle to find funding to rebury their relatives. https://www.texasobserver.org/native-american-graves-protection-repatriation-act-texas/
5/ “Native people were considered archeological objects, like pots,” says Jackie Swift, a member of the Comanche and Fort Sill Apache tribes and the repatriation manager at the @SmithsonianNMAI. https://www.texasobserver.org/native-american-graves-protection-repatriation-act-texas/
6/ The NAGPRA office doesn’t track the number of remains actually reburied, but of the nearly 200,000 remains held in federally funded collections nationally, only 40 percent have even gone through the process. https://www.texasobserver.org/native-american-graves-protection-repatriation-act-texas/
7/ In Texas, the proportion is lower: Just a quarter of the state’s nearly 5,000 Indigenous remains have gone through the NAGPRA process. https://www.texasobserver.org/native-american-graves-protection-repatriation-act-texas/
8/ The Texas Archeological Research Laboratory at @UTAustin holds the remains of 2,000 Indigenous people, the vast majority “culturally unaffiliated” with any tribe.
To date, the remains of only two people have been returned from UT’s collections. https://www.texasobserver.org/native-american-graves-protection-repatriation-act-texas/
To date, the remains of only two people have been returned from UT’s collections. https://www.texasobserver.org/native-american-graves-protection-repatriation-act-texas/
9/ Even when remains are repatriated, tribes face obstacles to reburial. Sometimes reburial requires the purchase of a new site or plots in historic cemeteries—a cost that falls to tribes to cover. https://www.texasobserver.org/native-american-graves-protection-repatriation-act-texas/
10/ “It is kind of like if a scientist went and dug up your grandmother and put her in a repository—and then asked you to fund reburying her,” says Jerry Williams, a sociology professor at @SFASU. https://www.texasobserver.org/native-american-graves-protection-repatriation-act-texas/