Native American Graves Protection and Repatriation Act

Um, I actually did, like, an honors thesis using the remains of indigenous people, um, from what's now, uh, Louisiana.

Uh, but at the time, they didn't fall under NAGPRA, the Native American Graves Protection Repatriation Act.

There was a loophole where, um, if institutions had remains that they could argue were, like, too old to be linked to a living group of indigenous people, that they didn't fall under NAGPRA.

Um, and at the time, I didn't comprehend the, what that, that meant.

Um, so I did my undergrad.

That's one of the things I love in my books, is that I do write about the archeology that most people don't think of, you know, like, that they don't know exists, that I'm not writing the Indiana Jones because he was a looter, but that, you know.

[laughs] And, you know, I, I write about contract, uh, compliance archeology and, you know, private sector, you know, s- and NAGPRA and all of the, the laws that, that govern, um, archeological field work in the US and abroad.

And actually I'll, I'll give...

A lot of people probably wonder, you know, why I'm in Okinawa, why my husband is an archeologist for the Marine Corps.

We have a cave, that very cave, and it has human remains that were collected from that cave in the 1960s.

And so, um, there's a law called the Native American Graves Repatriation Act, or NAGPRA.

I probably butchered that.

But anyway, um, we tried to give those remains back to the local tribe, and they wouldn't have it.

Can you tell us a little more about what's happening there?

NAGPRA law deems any federal tribe within the area has the right to get the funerary objects as well as the remains.

Now, the problem with that here in Florida was that...

There's been a lot of building since then.

So I kind of became a headache for the developer and worked out a deal where the Miccosukee and the Seminoles would both get a list of what items that were there and they were allowed to to choose what they thought was a sacred item and not what the archaeologist thinks a sacred item is or a funerary possession because they they just don't have the understanding that that maybe this necklace that i have on uh holds something which it does this one does but They don't understand that.

And they would just take that and put it in their own collection or put it in a museum.

So I, I got to fight with using NAGPRA to help the Seminole and the Miccosukee have better control of what they're allowed to get.

We fought hard to try to have everything just stay there.

Everybody knows that property and that farm, and this is, you know, blowing up into a big dispute.

You know, Metroparks is beginning a process here under the federal Native American Graves Protection and Repatriation Act.

And, you know, there's been previous connections in the past to the Wyandot Nation.

They established a cultural affiliation after those remains were found during the 1970s.

The damage done to their homeland was still profound, but it could have been worse.

In 2025, with Trump back in office, most of the laws that had protected this land, including the Native American Graves Protection and Repatriation Act, were waived by Secretary Noem.

That wasn't the only law waived.

I want to read a list of all the laws she waived, because I think it gives a good impression of things that matter less to these people than building a giant monument to grift and hatred.

The National Environmental Policy Act, the Endangered Species Act, the Federal Water Pollution Control Act, the National Historic Preservation Act, the Migratory Bird Treaty Act, the Migratory Bird Conservation Act, the Clean Air Act, the Archaeological Resources Protection Act, the Paleontological Resources Protection Act, the Federal Cave Resources Protection Act of 1988, the National Trail System Act, the Safe Drinking Water Act, the Noise Control Act, the Solid Waste Disposal Act, as amended by the Resource Conservation and Recovery Act, the Comprehensive Environment Response Compensation and Liability Act, the Archaeological and Historic Preservation Act, the Antiquities Act, the Historic Sites, Buildings, and Antiquities Act, the Eagle Protection Act, the Native American Graves Protection and Repatriation Act, the Administrative Procedure Act, Section 438 of the Energy Independence and Security Act, the National Fish and Wildlife Act of 1956, the Fish and Wildlife Coordination Act, the Farmland Policy Protection Act, the Federal Land Policy and Management Act, the Wild Horse and Burrow Act, the Coastal Zone Management Act, and the Otay Mountain Wilderness Act of 1999.

Each of these laws was passed for a reason.

It's not easy in this country to restrain capitalism through the law.