The Native American Graves Protection and Repatriation Act The Native American Graves Protection and Repatriation Act was signed into law on November 23, 1990. It provides a nationwide repatriation and standards for the return of Native American remains and materials that are protected by federal agencies and institutions.11 It is one of the only federal statutes to ever provide enforceable protections for Native American culture. The federal government’s duty is to protect Indian tribes from actions committed by the society that seeks to destroy, steal, or harm Native culture.12 Repatriation is the process where specific items of Native American culture in a museum or federal institute’s collection are returned to the lineal descendants …show more content…
As a result of the NAGPRA, museums and Native tribes are now engaged in dialogue. Many repatriations have been completed since NAGPRA in 1990. This act has been a great success for Native American Indians and the rights to their cultural objects and the return of their ancestor’s remains.13 Unfortunately, monetary compensation is the popular concept of how society interprets how repatriations are conducted between Native Americans and federal institutes. The actual process is a considerably more complex working system that involves social, economic, and political dimensions. Most Native Nations have even disputed that monetary compensation could never be a replacement for the loss of their objects, land, or the remains of their …show more content…
Native American remains and sacred materials have been misused and misinterpreted since the eighteenth century when the study of humans began to arise. To the rest of the world, Native artifacts and remains were there to be used for study and examination to better understand their culture. Other Native artifacts were pilfered and sold for profit. Throughout the years, skeletal remains, ceremonial items, sacred and grave artifacts have been taken by looters, poachers, grave robbers, and even scientists. In the early science of archaeology, Native artifacts were misused, lost, sold, or damaged by archaeologists, anthropologists, and others scientists. Native tribes did not have the government on their side to protect their culture or any laws and regulations in place to claim their sacred