Американың жергілікті халықтарының қабірлері мен мүліктерін қорғау заңы

1990 US law protecting Native American remains and artifacts

The Native American Graves Protection and Repatriation Act (NAGPRA), Pub. L. 101 601, 25 U. S. C. 3001 et seq., 104 Stat. 3048, is a United States federal law enacted on November 16, 1990. The Act requires federal agencies and institutions that receive federal funding to return Native American "cultural items" to lineal descendants and culturally affiliated American Indian tribes, Alaska Native villages, and Native Hawaiian organizations. Cultural items include human remains, funerary objects, sacred objects, and objects of cultural patrimony. A program of federal grants assists in the repatriation process and the Secretary of the Interior may assess civil penalties on museums that fail to comply. NAGPRA also establishes procedures for the inadvertent discovery or planned excavation of Native American cultural items on federal or tribal lands. While these provisions do not apply to discoveries or excavations on private or state lands, the collection provisions of the Act may apply to Native American cultural items if they come under the control of an institution that receives federal funding. NAGPRA makes it a criminal offense to traffic in Native American human remains without right of possession or in Native American cultural items obtained in violation of the Act. Penalties for a first offense may reach 12 months imprisonment and a $100,000 fine. The Department of the Interior amended NAGPRA in 2023 to clarify steps for its implementation. The amendment, which went into effect on January 12, 2024, states " museums and Federal agencies must defer to the Native American traditional knowledge of lineal descendants, Indian Tribes, and Native Hawaiian organizations."

The intent of the NAGPRA legislation is to address long standing claims by federally recognized tribes for the return of human remains and cultural objects unlawfully obtained from pre contact, post contact, former, and current Native American homelands. Interpretation of human and Indigenous rights, prehistoric presence, cultural affiliation with antiquities, and the return of remains and objects can be controversial and contested. It includes provisions that delineate the legal processes by which museums and federal agencies are required to return certain Native American cultural items—human remains, gravesite materials, and other objects of cultural patrimony—to proven lineal descendants, culturally related Native American tribes, and Native Hawaiian groups. Outcomes of NAGPRA repatriation efforts are slow and cumbersome, leading many tribes to spend considerable effort documenting their requests; collections' holders are obliged to inform and engage with tribes whose materials they may possess. NAGPRA was enacted primarily at the insistence and by the direction of members of Native American nations.

Tribes had many reasons based in law that made legislation concerning tribal grave protection and repatriation necessary. State Statutory Law: Historically, states only regulated and protected marked graves. Native American graves were often unmarked and did not receive the protection provided by these statutes. Common Law: The colonizing population formed much of the legal system that developed over the course of settling the United States. This law did not often take into account the unique Native American practices concerning graves and other burial practices. It did not account for government actions against Native Americans, such as removal, the relationship that Native Americans as different peoples maintain with their dead, and sacred ideas and myths related to the possession of graves. Equal Protection: Native Americans, as well as others, often found that the remains of Native American graves were treated differently from the dead of other races. First Amendment: As in most racial and social groups, Native American burial practices relate strongly to their religious beliefs and practices. They held that when tribal dead were desecrated, disturbed, or withheld from burial, their religious beliefs and practices are being infringed upon. Religious beliefs and practices are protected by the First Amendment. Sovereignty Rights: Native Americans hold unique rights as sovereign bodies, leading to their relations to be controlled by their own laws and customs. The relationship between the people and their dead is an internal relationship, to be understood as under the sovereign jurisdiction of the tribe. Treaty: From the beginning of the U. S. government and tribe relations, the tribe maintained rights unless specifically divested to the U. S. government in a treaty. The U. S. government does not have the right to disturb Native American graves or their dead, because it has not been granted by any treaty.

The Native American Graves Protection and Repatriation Act is a law that establishes the ownership of cultural items excavated or discovered on federal or tribal land after November 16, 1990. The act also applies to land transferred by the federal government to the states under the Water Resources Department Act. However, the provisions of the legislation do not apply to private lands. The Act states that Native American remains and associated funerary objects belong to lineal descendants. If lineal descendants cannot be identified, then those remains and objects, along with associated funerary and sacred objects, and objects of cultural patrimony belong to the tribe on whose lands the remains were found or the tribe having the closest known relationship to them. The act also requires each federal agency, museum, or institution that receives federal funds to prepare an inventory of remains and funerary objects and a summary of sacred objects, cultural patrimony objects, and unassociated funerary objects. The act provides for repatriation of these items when requested by the appropriate descendant of the tribe. This applies to remains or objects discovered at any time, even before November 16, 1990. Since the legislation passed, the human remains of approximately 32,000 individuals have been returned to their respective tribes. Nearly 670,000 funerary objects, 120,000 unassociated funerary objects, and 3,500 sacred objects have been returned.

Residential and commercial development was a driving force in the desecration of many Native American burial sites, particularly in the 20th century with the expansion of suburbs and urban sprawl. For example, in Wana the Bear v. Community Construction (1982), two hundred Miwok ancestral remains were bulldozed in the development of a residential area in Stockton, California. A descendant of the people, Wana the Bear, attempted to prevent further desecration by arguing that the site should continue to be protected as a cemetery. The California Courts of Appeal sided with the construction company, which finished in its destruction of the burial grounds for residential development.

Maria Pearson is often credited with being the earliest catalyst for the passage of NAGPRA legislation; she has been called "the Founding Mother of modern Indian repatriation movement" and the "Rosa Parks of NAGPRA". Pearson and other activists were featured in the 1995 BBC documentary Bones of Contention.

The 1987 looting of a 500 year old burial mound at the Slack Farm in Kentucky, in which human remains were tossed to the side while relics were stolen, made national news and helped to galvanize popular support for protection of Native American graves. Likewise, several protests at the Dickson Mounds site in Illinois, where numerous Indian skeletons were exposed on display, also increased national awareness of the issue.

A number of archeologists are concerned that they are being prevented from studying ancient remains which cannot be traced to any historic tribe. The issue has repeatedly stalled archaeological investigations, such as in the case of the Spirit Cave mummy; fears have been voiced that an anti scientific sentiment could well have permeated politics to an extent that scientists might find their work to be continuously barred by Native Americans rights activists.

Compliance with the legislation can be complicated such as the Kennewick Man, a skeleton found on July 28, 1996 near Kennewick, Washington. The almost complete skeleton was close to 9,000 years old. Ancient remains from North America are rare, making it a valuable scientific discovery. The federally recognized Umatilla, Colville, Yakima, and Nez Perce tribes had each claimed Kennewick Man as their ancestor, and sought permission to rebury him. Kennewick, Washington is classified as part of the ancestral land of the Umatilla. Archaeologists said that because of Kennewick Man's great age, there was insufficient evidence to connect him to modern tribes. The great age of the remains makes this discovery scientifically valuable. As archaeologists, forensic specialists, and linguists differed about whether the adult male was of Indigenous origin, the standing law, if conclusively found by a preponderance of evidence to be Native American, would give the tribe of the geographic area where he was found a claim to the remains. Anthropologists wanted to preserve and study the remains, however, steps had already been taken to repatriate the Kennewick Man given that he was discovered on federal lands. A lawsuit was filed by Douglas Owsley and Robson Bonnichsen, along with other notable anthropologists, in the hopes of preventing the repatriation of the skeleton. In 2004, the court sided with the plaintiffs' assertion that due to the skeleton's age, there was not enough information available at the time to conclude whether the Kennewick Man had any cultural or genetic ties to any present day Native American tribes, and granted the plaintiffs' request to further study the remains.

Return to the Earth is an inter religious project whose goal is to inter unidentified remains in regional burial sites. Over 110,000 remains that cannot be associated with a particular tribe are held in institutions across the United States, as of 2006. The project seeks to enable a process of reconciliation between Native and non Native peoples, construct cedar burial boxes, produce burial cloths and fund the repatriation of remains. The first of the burial sites is near the Cheyenne Cultural Center in Clinton, Oklahoma.

Cal NAGPRA (Assembly Bill (978) is an act created by the state of California which was signed into law in 2001. The act was created to implement the same repatriation expectations for state funded institutions, museums, repositories, or collections as those federally supported through NAGPRA. Cal NAGPRA also supports non federally recognized tribes within California that were exempt from legal rights to repatriation under the federal NAGPRA act.

The issues of such resources are being addressed by international groups dealing with Indigenous rights. For example, in 1995 the United States signed an agreement with El Salvador in order to protect all pre‑Columbian artifacts from leaving the region. Soon after, it signed similar agreements with Canada, Peru, Guatemala, and Mali and demonstrated leadership in implementing the 1970 UNESCO Convention. The UNESCO convention membership increased to 86 countries by 1997, and 193 by 2007. UNESCO appears to be reducing the illicit antiquities trade. Although difficult to track, the scholar Phyllis Messenger notes that some antiquities traders have written articles denouncing the agreements, which suggests that it is reducing items sold to them. An international predecessor of the UNESCO Convention and NAGPRA is the 1954 Hague Convention for the Protection of Cultural Property in the Event of Armed Conflict. The Hague Convention was the first international convention to focus on preserving cultural heritage from the devastation of war. Looting and destruction of other civilizations have been characteristics of war recorded from the first accounts of all cultures. On September 30, 1897, Lieutenant Robert Peary brought six Inuit from Greenland to the American Museum of Natural History in New York, at the request of the anthropologist Franz Boas, in order to "obtain leisurely certain information which will be of the greatest scientific importance" regarding Inuit culture. About two weeks after arrival at the museum, all six of the Inuit became sick with colds and fever. They began to perform their tribal healing process and were mocked for their bizarre behavior. Viewing these people became a form of entertainment for the Americans. By November 1, 1897, they were admitted to the Bellevue Hospital Center with tuberculosis, which they likely had contracted before their trip. In February, the first Inuit died, followed shortly after by two more. By the time the sickness had run its course, only two men survived. Minik was adopted by a superintendent of the museum, while Uissakassak returned to his homeland in Greenland. Later, after being lied to and being told that his father Qisuk had received a proper Inuit burial, Minik was shocked to find his father's skeleton on display in the museum. In 1993 the museum agreed to return the four Inuit skeletons to Greenland for proper burial. Representatives of the Museum went to Greenland that year to participate. In contrast to peoples in other areas, some local Inuit thought that the burial was more desired by the Christian representatives of the museum, and that the remains could have just as appropriately been kept in New York. David Hurst Thomas' study of the case shows the complexity of reburial and repatriation cases, and the need for individual approaches to each case by all affected parties.