Under the 1990 Native American Graves and Repatriation Act (NAGPRA), any institution that receives federal funding must identify any Native American, Native Alaskan or Native Hawaiian ancestral remains, funerary objects, sacred objects and objects of cultural patrimony in their possession.
Critics of the law claim it was passed without any real guidelines for how consultations between tribes and institutions should happen, and what a reasonable timeline for return looked like.
“We have no idea what they hold in their archives,” Kandice Watson, the Oneida Indian Nation’s lead archivist, told ABC News. “There’s no way that we could start the process. So, we really do have to rely on these universities and their morals and ethics to return these items to their rightful owners.”
