Who Owns Their Dead: Unequal Access To Repatriation in US Law

Museums and scientific institutions in the United States house human remains and important cultural objects in their collections; materials obtained in various manners over the past few centuries. In 1990, Congress passed the Native American Graves Protection and Repatriation Act, which mandated that federally funded institutions return Native remains and cultural objects to the affiliated tribe. Over the last three decades the rules have been modified a couple of times with the input of tribes and institutions. This has become an ongoing negotiation process as both public and professional conversations change. In recent conversations of repatriation, the topic has even expanded outside of Native claims and into African American claims. Understanding these conversations is critical to understanding the evolving process of repatriation. This paper's purpose is to analyze the conversations from the past and today concerning federally unrecognized tribes' access to repatriation and the emerging discussion surrounding African American access to repatriation.