Death on Display: The Journey Home for Native American Remains Through the Lense of the Native American Graves Protection and Repatriation Act (NAGPRA)

Abstract

NAGPRA is a federal law that was passed in 1990 to repatriate and protect human remains and artifacts of Native Americans, Native Alaskans, and Native Hawaiians. Through federal documentation and data, along with independent news articles and Kathleen Fine-Dare’s Grave Injustice: The American Indian Repatriation Movement and NAGPRA, this paper analyzes NAGPRA to determine its success over the last thirty-three years of repatriation efforts regarding Native American and Native Hawaiian human remains held by institutions, agencies, and museums. This paper analyses the regulations, statistics, and public perception of NAGPRA over the last thirty-three years to better understand the law’s successes, failures, and where changes can be made to better improve the repatriation of Native human remains.