A new report from ProPublica reveals how government-funded research grants have allowed institutions that have Indigenous remains in their collections to delay repatriation efforts mandated under the Native American Graves Protection and Repatriation Act (NAGPRA).
Although two of his National Science Federation-funded projects involved collecting and destroying portions of Indigenous remains, University of Utah professor Joan Brenner Coltrain initially believed his work would help facilitate the repatriation of said remains in accordance with NAGPRA by identifying descendants. However, this work would have prompted museums and universities to avoid repatriating the remains of their collections, ProPublicasays the report.
In 2003, Brenner Coltrain began directing research on native remains of the American Southwest housed in the Basketmakers Collection at Harvard University’s Peabody Museum of Archeology and Ethnology as well as the Manhattan Museum American Museum of Natural History (AMNH). The research was funded by grants administered by the National Science Federation. The professor sought to identify agricultural and food patterns as well as approximate life years of several sets of remains excavated from sacred burials at the Chaco Canyon settlements in New Mexico, Bears Ears National Monument in Utah and an ancient cliffside village in Colorado. She and her research team harvested and analyzed collagen and mitochondrial DNA from pieces of bone taken from the remains, destroying them in the process of identifying genetic information.
In his article, Brenner Coltrain acknowledged that several Indigenous peoples had made repatriation requests to the Peabody Museum, noting that “equitably repatriating this collection depends on the genetic relationships and time frame under consideration.”
However, ProPublica reported that Brenner Coltrain’s research did not result in repatriations from the Peabody Museum and AMNH and instead inspired other researchers to begin probing Aboriginal remains in institutional collections, often without the informed consent of Aboriginal descendants and in direct violation of their burial customs.
The report highlights several other research projects conducted on indigenous remains without informing or obtaining the consent of their original populations, noting that many researchers have intentionally avoided connecting with tribal representatives for fear that their research will be misguided by ownership debacles.
“There’s this perverse sense of belonging, that ‘these are our samples.’ And “you know, we protect it for the sake of research,” said Krystal Tsosie, a Navajo Nation citizen and assistant professor at Arizona State University. ProPublica.
Under his original settlement, NAGPRA required that all institutions holding indigenous remains inventory their collections, consult indigenous peoples and direct descendants with the results of the inventory, process any request for repatriation, and issue a public notice of repatriation or transfer of remains. However, a major loophole in the 1990 law allowed institutions to declare remains “culturally unidentifiable,resulting in over 100,000 sets of Indigenous remains not being made available for repatriation requests to the dismay of tribal officials across the continent. Indigenous groups and communities to prove their relationship to ‘culturally unidentifiable’ remains.
While AMNH still holds over 3,500 sets of remains (53% of which were not made available for return) and the The Peabody Museum houses more than 10,000 sets (including 62% not available for return), both establishments halted scientific research on the remains without explicit tribal permission. Hyperallergic contacted AMNH and the Peabody Museum for comment on ProPublicadiscoveries.
From last october, NAGPRA’s repatriation guidelines are being revised to remove the burden of proof of relationship from indigenous people. Some proposed guidelines awaiting approval including the naming of a geographic connection as a ground for “affiliation” in repatriation requests, respect for Indigenous customs and traditions when handling cultural remains or objects, and the complete removal of the term “culturally unidentifiable” from inventory classification reports and the inclusion of geographic origin in place.
