Re-Curating the Carceral Settler Assemblage: Implementing the Native American Graves Protection and Repatriation Act at a State Repository

This dissertation addresses why some South Carolina institutions continue to house Ancestral individuals and belongings over thirty years after the Native American Graves Protection and Repatriation Act (NAGPRA) passed in 1990. Different kinds of institutions glossed as “museums” under the law have vastly different levels of fiscal resources, personnel, and collections management protocols to comply with NAGPRA. For example, archaeological curation facilities are frequently housed at state museums, state archaeology offices, and state universities. They are subject to extra layers of state law and the vagaries of state budget allocations. Yet, they are equally accountable for NAGPRA compliance as for-profit museums grossing multi-million dollars in annual revenue. Far from excusing curation facilities for lapsed NAGPRA compliance, I suggest that understanding the specific challenges facing these specialized institutions yields useful compliance strategies. Through critical typologies and collection itineraries of holdings at the South Carolina state curation facility, I demonstrate the emergent condition of a state repository as a carceral settler assemblage. I contend that legal and institutional frameworks territorialize and code according to settler colonial logic to bring Indigenous Ancestors, belongings, and cultural items under state control. Finally, I suggest that understanding state curation facilities—and heritage institutions more broadly—as carceral settler assemblages opens pathways to responsive institutional policy that supports Indigenous sovereignty.