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The 2024 Updated NAGPRA Regulations - Ep 92
197 Plays2 days ago
On today’s episode, Jessica chats with Krystiana Krupa (NAGPRA Program Officer for the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign), Blythe Morrison (Collections Manager at BLM Canyons of the Ancients Visitor Center and Museum and a citizen of the Blackfeet Nation), Jayne-Leigh Thomas (Director of the NAGPRA Office at Indiana University), and Chance Ward (NAGPRA Coordinator for History Colorado; Lakota [Cheyenne River Sioux Tribe]). The panel talks about the 2024 regulation changes to the Native American Graves Protection and Repatriation Act (NAGPRA), including Federal Collection Reporting, Inventory Resubmission Deadlines, and Duty of Care. The discussion spends extra time with Duty of Care’s three main components: a) museums must consult with tribes on how to care for a collection b) deference to tribal knowledge c) access, research, and exhibition is prohibited without consent. The panelists also discuss how they’ve been applying the new regulations and what’s been successful for them, as well as main challenges that they are experienced or heard. Finally, the episode gets into the main questions each panelist has received, how they answer those, and what resources they refer people to (see below!). If you have a question for this panel, send them to [email protected] and if Jessica receives enough questions, the panel has agreed to do a follow up episode to answer them.
Transcripts
- For rough transcripts of this episode go to https://www.archpodnet.com/heritagevoices/92
Links
- Heritage Voices on the APN
- Heritage Voices Episode 79 on INSTEP with Chance and Jayne-Leigh
- Intensive NAGPRA Summer Training & Education Program (INSTEP) Web Page
- Intensive NAGPRA Summer Training & Education Program (INSTEP) Facebook Page
- Nationwide NAGPRA Community of Practice (Note that many regions, states, etc. also have their own Communities of Practice.)
- Native American Graves Protection and Repatriation Act Regulations (Revised regulations effective January 2024.)
- National NAGPRA YouTube
- National NAGPRA Webinars
- For additional links see show page: https://www.archpodnet.com/heritagevoices/92
Contact
Jessica
ArchPodNet
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Transcript
Introduction to Heritage Voices and NAGPRA 2024
00:00:01
Speaker
You're listening to the Archaeology Podcast Network.
00:00:10
Speaker
Welcome to Heritage Voices, episode 92. I'm Jessica Equinto, and I'm your host. And today we are talking about the 2024 updated NAGPA regulations. Before we begin, I'd like to honor and acknowledge that the lands I'm recording on today are part of the new or useful studio land from Puneza and Esco Pueblo in the homeland.
Guest Introductions and Their Expertise
00:00:33
Speaker
Today, we have Christiana Krupa, Blythe Morrison, Jane Lee Thomas, and Chance Ward on the toe. Quite a roster there. Christiana Krupa currently serves as the NAGPRA program officer for the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign. She has a master's degrees in biological anthropology. Get many of us, that's exciting. From Indiana University and is currently completing a master's in law from the University of Illinois. Hi, Jessica. Thanks for having us on today.
00:01:02
Speaker
Blythe Morrison is the Collections Manager at the BLM Canyons of the Ancients Visitor Center and Museum. She is a citizen of the Blackfeet Nation and has a master's degree from Northern Arizona University and a bachelor's degree from Fort Lewis College. Hi, Jessica. Happy to be here.
00:01:20
Speaker
Dr. Jane Lee Thomas is the director of the NAGPRA office at Indiana University. She has a PhD in archaeology from the University of Edinburgh in Scotland and an MSC in resource management from Central Washington University. Hello, everyone. Chance Ward is Lakota from the Cheyenne River Sioux Tribe in South Dakota. He got his M.S. from the University of Colorado and is a NAGPRA coordinator for History Colorado in Denver.
00:01:49
Speaker
Hello, everyone. Happy to be here. Yeah. I'm so excited to have you all. I think everyone's been waiting for this episode. We're already getting towards the end of 2024 and haven't talked about the new NYPA regulations.
Significance and Challenges of NAGPRA 2024
00:02:05
Speaker
So everybody listening is finally here. So I wanted to to start this out.
00:02:14
Speaker
Two of you will be the past listeners, Janely and Chance have been on the show before talking about NAGPRA. But if, if all of you could just give a ah brief intro to your experience with NAGPRA and especially to your current experience in 2024, working with the new NAGPRA regulations. So why don't we start with Christiana, keep that same order.
00:02:44
Speaker
yeah That sounds great. So my NAGPRA experience started when I was a graduate student. So I've been working in NAGPRA for almost 10 years now. I was a graduate student assistant for the NAGPRA office at Indiana University with Jane Lee. And then I worked full time in that office for about a year before I came to the University of Illinois in 2020, where I am currently the NAGPRA program officer.
00:03:09
Speaker
And I do think, you know, we all had to make a pretty big shift in, in how we were handling NAGPRA compliance work in 2024 when the regulations but were updated in January of this year. So we've definitely been making some concerted efforts on our campus in moving forward with making sure that we are both efficient and respectful in following those regulatory changes. All right. Blythe, how about you?
00:03:36
Speaker
I got started working
Key Changes in NAGPRA Regulations
00:03:38
Speaker
under a NAGPRA grant at Fort Lewis College in 2018, and I was fortunate enough to work with one of my undergraduate mentors, Dr. Kathy Fine Dare, in doing a collections review. Hi Kathy. Shout out to Kathy. Yeah, if you're listening, we think you're neat.
00:03:57
Speaker
So that grant was actually extended, and I was able to do an additional review with the assistance of a good friend and brilliant Dene archaeologist named Kristin Kayani. And we did a review of the funnel. So it felt really good to address some of the past wrongs at our undergraduate institution. And it was a really um sort of a healing project. And that is also around the time that I met Chance Ward and he was involved in some of the consultations there. Currently I am working for the federal government in a very different sort of role, but my role within NAGPRA has always been on the support end. and And that continues in my current collections management role. Awesome. All right, Jane Lee, you're up.
00:04:53
Speaker
My first experience with NAGPRA was actually during my master's degree starting in 2004 at Central Washington University. I was studying bioarchaeology and NAGPRA and then um actually came back to doing NAGPRA in 2013 when I was hired at Indiana University. I have been the director of the NAGPRA office since 2013. And our project started from just me to now six full-time people dedicated to NAGRA compliance. That's awesome. Wow.
00:05:27
Speaker
All right, and last but definitely not least, Chance. Let's see, how did I get started? I got started also while I was a student at Fort Lewis College. I think being able to take classes in anthropology, archaeology, and shout out again to Dr. Kathy Fine there, who I also took classes with. I took a museum class with her and it kind of showed me what NAGPro was. i Honestly, I had no idea about it growing up, which is a question I often ask myself why that is. But she actually invited me to join a NAGPRA committee meeting. And I was sort of just sitting in the back wall observing and listening. And I got to hear some arguing going on between professors and tribal reps. And I was just kind of in the back in awe
00:06:26
Speaker
And I thought, wow, it's pretty interesting. I didn't know things like this existed or were happening in universities. So I ended up coming to a couple other meetings and joining the Fort Lewis NAGPRA committee as an official student member. And you know even beyond graduation, i I also got to help in these consultations that Blythe was referring to. I got to be a a note taker under one of the tribal consultations and kind of host tribal reps that were coming in, visit with them, show them around to collection spaces in our Fort Lewis Center of Southwest Studies. And then I, after graduation, I started working in cultural resource management. And after doing that a few years, I wanted to expand my experiences. And I actually ended up working with the Southern Ute tribes, Tippo office.
00:07:24
Speaker
And I ended up working with them for a year and a half as a NAGPRA assistant. And that was about the time I decided to apply for grad school. And I ended up going to the University of Colorado in Boulder in their museum and field studies program, which internship over the summer was a requirement. And before I even started looking for one, History Colorado reached out to me to be their intern specifically. And that's kind of how I got my introduction to staff at History Colorado. Got to know people, join in with our, with the NAGPRA coordinator then and our state archeologist. And then once I graduated, the job actually opened up and I applied for it. And now here I am just passing my one year mark at History Colorado. That's awesome.
00:08:23
Speaker
I also, I was, while you were doing the intro, I was like, Oh yeah, I forgot you worked at the Southern you tip. I, it's when you do the math, I'm like, wow, I didn't realize we had known each other that long.
00:08:37
Speaker
Yeah, it was, it was mostly through COVID though. So fair enough. Fair enough. All right. Well. We have a big topic today, but let's, let's just get started with some basics here first. So as a group, what changed from the previous regulations to the, the 2024 regulations that, that just came out? Daley, do you want to talk about the timeline
Understanding Duty of Care in NAGPRA
00:09:10
Speaker
requirements? I feel like you've been extra, maybe not impacted, but paid extra attention to those given the collections that you guys manage.
00:09:18
Speaker
Sure, so one of the new requirements revolves around inventory collections, so collections of Native American and Native Hawaiian ancestral remains and associated funerary objects. From the start of this year, January 13, 2024, institutions now have five years to re-inventory their collections and consult on those collections, determine affiliation, and that's by the five-year deadline. And after that five years, you have six months to complete all of your notice of inventory completion documents for those collections.
00:09:58
Speaker
So for us, having immensely large collections as we do at Indiana, there's been a lot of um strategy discussions with tribes, obviously, so that we, you know, as everyone is being inundated for right now that we are not overloading with the tribes with too much at the moment, but also being mindful that we do have this deadline and and how is that going to look moving forward? Yeah, five years, no big deal, right?
00:10:27
Speaker
I mean, and and I'm sure we could we could fill up a lot of time with this. I don't know how much we have for that today, but I mean, the feedback that I've received from our tribal partners is is that they're absolutely being inundated. And we'll get into duty of care in a little bit, but not only receiving requests to consult by repatriation coordinators,
00:10:49
Speaker
but requests to consult by museums that are now not allowed to put objects on display or have them available for access for research without consulting first. And so the feedback we received is that tribes are getting hit doubly hard by double requests by the same institution and tribes that I know of are working with 70 to 80 universities a year.
00:11:12
Speaker
And thinking of how to move forward within that five-year deadline, the discussion is supposedly there's ah an extension process. But again, what does that look like? And you know my time needs to be devoted towards consulting and getting collections out the door, not applying for giant extensions so we're we're all kind of I think in the same boat here both regionally and nationwide in that a lot of the collections that are very large and maybe even some that aren't are going to be facing what do we do in four years from now and and how
00:11:47
Speaker
how do we move forward respectfully, not just hurriedly getting collections out the door just to meet a deadline, but entering meaningful discussions, being respectful in the way that we return collections while not overwhelming our tribal partners. I think I would comment on that also just to say that you know to Jane Lee's point, there are these institutions, many that have very large collections and that are faced with these deadline requirements that might not be convenient or even feasible for our tribal partners. And you know speaking as an institution that has a considerably smaller NAGPRA collection,
00:12:27
Speaker
Those, I think, are important for people to think about in the sense that just because you have a small collection or you have a you know large group of small collections that you think you might be able to finish your consultation and your paperwork for relatively quickly, that doesn't mean that we're all going to be on the same timeline that our tribal partners need us to be on.
00:12:48
Speaker
So just because we might be ready to move on a repatriation doesn't mean that we should try to force our tribal partners into that timeline, because as Jane Lee mentioned, they might be working with 70 other institutions at the same time. And so I think that's something that we all have to be mindful of, regardless of the size of a collection, because we want to be respectful of our tribal partners and what their needs are and their priorities. And we don't want to overlook those as part of the repatriation process.
Implementing Duty of Care with Tribal Consultation
00:13:19
Speaker
I think there's been a, this, this big, you know, kind of misconception and I don't know where it's that's coming from the media. I don't know if that's coming from certain, you know, resources that are out there, but that, you know, NAGR is going to be done in five years because the institutions will have, you know, consulted and finished everything. but The reality is is that for a lot of communities, there's no reburial land. And so while notice of inventory completions might be submitted by a five-year deadline, that doesn't mean a single collection might move off of a campus.
00:13:51
Speaker
Because if institutions are in a hurry to consult and tribes are overwhelmed and inundated with trying to consult, the the repatriation aspect and the reburial aspect, which can be very, very large and time-consuming,
00:14:10
Speaker
may not happen. And so I think that there's a lot of misconceptions out there. I think there's a lot of misconceptions that if you have a big collection, that you're not doing NAGPRA work and and that if you are, if you have a small collection, you are. And I don't think that's true at all. Let's do one more. there's you You had mentioned three main changes to NAGPRA. Let's do one more ah real quick and we can talk about it a little bit more after the break.
00:14:37
Speaker
So one of the new changes for the regulations is that unlike in the past where we were all responsible for reporting our institutional collections, and by that I mean collections that are legally controlled by the institution, which we still have to do, one of the new requirements is that As an institution, you are also required to let National NAGPRA know what collections you curate that are NAGPRA eligible that are legally controlled by federal agencies. So for example, a lot of curation facilities will curate on behalf of the Forest Service or the Army Corps. And in the past, those agencies were and are required to report those collections to National NAGPRA
00:15:23
Speaker
But now, as the curation facility who has physical custody of those collections, we are also required to report those to National Magpra. and This is for accountability purposes. I think a lot of tribes were facing issues where they couldn't consult with an institution that physically had a collection because the institution didn't control it. And so those types of collections were easily overlooked in the NAGPRA process. And so that is something that's new that is a big ask for a lot of large curation facilities that might have collections from a variety of types of agencies.
00:16:01
Speaker
Interestingly, I did confirm this with National NAGPRA. The same requirement does not apply to state agency collections. So for example, we curate a lot of material for the Illinois Department of Transportation on our campus, but we are not required to let National NAGPRA know that we house those. There's a little bit of a discrepancy there between federal agency collections and state agency or state, generally speaking, state institution collections.
00:16:29
Speaker
versus publicly funded like universities and museums and what we typically think of as institutions that have reporting requirements under NAGPRA. So that was a pretty big shift in the sense that as institutions we are now responsible for more reporting requirements than we were in the past and that does apply to collections that we might not legally control.
00:16:51
Speaker
And I, I can't remember now if you mentioned this or not, but there was a one year deadline on that. So for those of you who haven't done it, this is due January 12th of 2025. So, so yeah, there was a one year requirement for that to have been done. All right. Well, on that note, we're already at our first break point and we will be right back.
00:17:18
Speaker
Okay, so we are back from our break and I want to touch on the third of the changes. So we've already talked about federal collection reporting and inventory resubmission deadlines. So let's get into duty of care.
00:17:37
Speaker
You guys can correct me if I'm wrong, but I think there's three parts to duty of care, A, B, and C. The first one I believe has to do with deferring to tribal nations on how curation standards are to be and how the collections are to be cared for before they returned.
00:17:54
Speaker
I think the second one has to do with deference to tribal knowledge. And basically, if a tribe tells you, for example, it's their sacred object, then that's it. It's their sacred object and it's returned. The third part of duty of care, if I remember correctly, is the one that's a little bit more detailed about research, access, and exhibition being prohibited unless NAGPRA compliance has already been done for that object. Does that sound right to you guys?
00:18:22
Speaker
Yeah, that last one you talked about was obtaining free prior and informed consent from lineal descendants, tribes, and NHOs. And it's pretty much on what they're exhibiting, having access, research, any type of examination, or anything like that about human remains and cultural items. And, you know, research is not required. So there's a certain area where you kind of use the information that you already have. Yeah, I think that's one of the big ones we should jump on. So one of the really interesting aspects of the duty of care requirement that requires informed consent, which never says anywhere that that consent has to be in writing, although I think probably most folks would agree that that's best practice.
00:19:18
Speaker
is that chance your comment on using the information you already have rather than doing quote unquote research, which requires tribal consent, is that inventory collections inventories are getting a little bit tricky in terms of terminology. So when National NAGPRA uses the term inventory, they mean a list of what you have, basically an itemized list based on the information that you have available.
00:19:47
Speaker
And that does not include actual physical collections inventory like going through the boxes in your collections. Those types of inventories that require direct access to collections are considered research under the duty of care requirement. So this is something that a lot of institutional folks realized and had to deal with pretty immediately when the regulations went into effect in January is that suddenly We were basically put in a position or we were being told we can't or shouldn't even open boxes and do a physical collections inventory without tribal permission.
Collaborative Practices with Tribes
00:20:24
Speaker
And so that is something that I think really shifted from the previous version of the regulations to this one, is that we are no longer required to do physical documentation of collections. We are supposed to create our inventories based on existing information.
00:20:41
Speaker
And that might be field notes or collection histories or museum records and things like that. But in terms of actually going through boxes and looking at every single item and listing what you have, that is technically supposed to have tribal permission before that occurs. And so that's a pretty big shift just in terms of the inventory process, I think on the institutional side.
00:21:07
Speaker
that has been a little bit of a point of contention in terms of actually completing the inventory process and submitting those inventories to tribes and to National NAGPRA. So I don't know if anybody else ah has had experience with that or would like to comment on it, but that's something that quickly became apparent for us at Illinois once the regulations went into effect.
00:21:28
Speaker
I think that one thing that some people have also considered and thought about is is um digital photographs, which is actually both a form of access and exhibition. A lot of, I think, museums have argued against that, but all of the the tribes that I've worked with so far have said that that is both access and digital exhibition and any online images also need to be pulled down.
00:21:56
Speaker
Does anybody have any examples from the work that they're currently doing about how how they're implementing this section on duty of care?
00:22:09
Speaker
Yeah, I'll try to speak to this a little bit. At Canyons of the Ancients, we're like many others in the process of restarting consultation around our collections. There's been a long record of consultation in the space, but we're trying to look at it from a more dynamic and culturally centered point of view.
00:22:28
Speaker
For example, we recently provided a lexicon of terms as a way of starting ah the conversation around potentially flagging items that may be culturally significant, but that someone from the outside might not be able to immediately recognize. and We have asked what's expressly off limits for exhibition and research, what requires additional tribal review, and what, if anything, is considered okay to share in any form without additional review.
00:22:54
Speaker
We're also looking at trying to develop you know ah standardized internal guidance from these conversations and looking at that as a sort of dynamic reference. And like any other form of consent, our internal guidelines may be updated or revoked at any time by any consulting parties.
00:23:15
Speaker
We're also trying to collaborate more with some of the agencies and entities who maintain ownership of collections, and this sort of perks back to the last thing that we were talking about, as well as other museums that may care for similar items.
00:23:30
Speaker
I think that you know we're sort of a bit of a unicorn within the BLM and really within the Department of Interior because we do curate collections for other agencies and entities. And that's not the case, for example, for the National Park Service. So this has been a big conversation you know within the BLM specifically, the few of us there are, there are about five of us having this conversation regularly, but we're actually going to have a big conversation, a DOI wide conversation about duty of care and hopefully getting more department level guidance because we're kind of shooting from the hip right now and really trying to lead it from consultation. You know, I think that a lot of people have really been, you know, kind of reactionary and some of the reactions have
00:24:24
Speaker
been, in in my opinion, a little performative. We're trying to sort of take a different tack and and really start from the conversations.
00:24:36
Speaker
rather than, you know, a headline about covering our collections or our exhibitions. But we're in the middle of consultation right now, actually. and And so far, the information that we've shared and the responses that we've gotten, like, it's been really well received. So I i have a lot of hope. In some ways, we are Really starting from the ground up, like I said, there are certainly institutions that are much farther ahead in terms of, you know, care and handling protocols, but we are doing our best and, you know, with the goal to to share that information with others
Challenges in NAGPRA Compliance and Tribal Alignment
00:25:16
Speaker
that have similar concerns, you know, again, with express permission from tribes and Pueblos.
00:25:22
Speaker
yeah And to kind of add on to what Blythe was talking about with us here at History Colorado, when I first started this job, one of the questions I was asked was, what's something I would like to do being in this position? And one of the first things I could think of was,
00:25:44
Speaker
updating tribal consultation on our collections, especially if they were old, outdated, you know, more than five years old, ten years old, try and bring tribes in again to to consult on things that may have been overlooked or may have not been identified in the past or, you know, I think maybe the dynamics of the relationship at the time may have been different than they are now. And I think something that I was hoping to do was to bring in as many tribes as we could, or at least that we're willing to to come in in person and visit and talk with us about these types of things. Of course, Colorado acknowledges 48 different tribes and I don't think we can bring all 48 in, but we at least wanted to start with the tribes that we work with the most.
00:26:39
Speaker
and I reached out and emailed and made phone calls and got at least six or seven tribes to to kind of commit and come in. I've been doing those all summer, but one of the things we wanted to do was kind of let the tribes make the agenda. We wanted to give them the opportunity to ask us questions. What do they want to hear? What do they want to talk about rather than us creating the agenda for the entire thing? So it kind of gave them room to speak with me, with our state archaeologists, with our director, with our collections people, our curators, and they got to ask questions about
00:27:23
Speaker
Why are things done a certain way? Things they were told in the past? Are they still happening today? And and that's kind of what I'm doing today. We have a some tribal reps here in our building today and I spent a whole morning with them talking about NAGPRA and duty of care and kind of some cultural affiliation and having discussions around that. And they'll be back in tomorrow so that we can talk about the other part of the regulations with handling, treatment, if they want certain cultural care applied to certain items. I know in some of the tribes we have already hosted, they've told us certain things are considered sacred when they weren't before.
00:28:09
Speaker
handling restrictions, whether it's men or women only. If it should not be disturbed, what type of box? If a box at all, does it want to lid? Should it be on an open shelf? Should it be in the closed shelf? You know, all these types of questions are what we're hoping to get out of these meetings. We're kind of letting the tribe tell us, you know, what do you want us to do? And we'll do our best to accommodate that. And we'll make sure that It continues from this day forward. If anything happens, we'll let you know. If research requests come in, do you want us to research, I mean, do you want us to contact you and let you know? And I think some of the tribes wanted to create their own list to give us for items that we should contact them about and what we don't need to contact them for.
00:29:03
Speaker
um But that will also be something that we can regularly update or change as needed. It's all all up to them. We're working with them. They're telling us.
00:29:17
Speaker
Chance, I think that's a really good point that you bring up about the agenda. This is something that I've seen over and over again, particularly working in the federal government is you've got your action items. There's a list of them and you're just checking them off as you go. And that really isn't the most successful way to to build trust and deep communication.
00:29:39
Speaker
with Indigenous representatives. The way that we've approached that too is sort of having like a dynamic agenda where we have you know come with a lot of information that we're ready to talk about but letting it really be guided ah around by who's in the room rather than what we think we want to get done that day.
00:29:58
Speaker
I think 1 of the things that we've begun to implement in the state of Illinois, not just and at the University of Illinois is. Developing specific duty of care documents for particular collections. So when we initiate a consultation.
00:30:14
Speaker
as part of the consultation process, we develop a draft duty of care document with the tribes. And so that outlines all of those expectations at the University of Illinois. And I know that at least Jane Lee is also in this position. We have quite a lot of split collections, meaning that part of the collection is at the University of Illinois and part of it is at one or multiple other museums and institutions. And so developing a duty of care document with the expectations and understanding of how ancestors and their belongings are going to be curated, how they're going to be handled, what the processes for those things is.
00:30:55
Speaker
has been very, very helpful for us. And that particularly works well for split collections, but it's also helpful in general to have written guidelines effectively from our tribal partners that say, this is how we would like these individuals to be handled. These are what we expect from you in terms of the processes that you will be following at the institution. And that's something that has worked very well, I think, in my experience so far.
00:31:21
Speaker
just having that understanding between all of the parties that are involved so that everyone is completing the process the same way and there are no surprises for anyone.
Clarifying Duty of Care and Compliance Issues
00:31:32
Speaker
I think because of split and loaned collections, there's been a lot of people, whether they're trying to be problematic or not, trying to make circular arguments. And and one of them, for example, that I'm sure other people have run into is, i'm going to I'm going to make this up. This is not actually true. But let's say I have, there's collections at the University of Illinois that are legally controlled by Indiana.
00:31:57
Speaker
The question is, I can't do NAGPRA on them, but how can I go and get them? Because that would be access. And if we don't know who they go to, do we? And then there's a lot of folks that say, well, you can't do anything. And and I asked and talked with National NAGPRA about this because you know there's a concern about the collections that are not within your care.
00:32:25
Speaker
and The comment from National NAGPRA was, you do not have to consult. You can go and get those collections because you cannot care for collections if they are not within your possession. So you cannot do your duty of care ah requirements if you cannot control or if you do not have the collections with you.
00:32:48
Speaker
for example. And and i so I think there's a lot of, you know, the duty of care requirements was never intended to prevent NAGPRA practitioners from doing NAGPRA compliance. It was primarily for museums and institutions that were rehousing without asking tribes, who were doing research without permission, and who were putting objects on display without consultation. All right. Any last thoughts on duty of care? I think the only thing I would add is sort of reflecting what Jane Lee just said. The purpose of duty of care
00:33:26
Speaker
in in my mind is to make institutions effectively consider tribal priorities to be their priorities also. And so instead of saying, well, but the institution doesn't do it that way, or we need to do X, Y, and Z in order to make a cultural affiliation, that's not actually what the law says anymore. The tribes have a lot more influence. They have a lot more control over how collections are handled, how the repatriation process actually moves forward. And I think you know to Jane Lee's point,
00:34:00
Speaker
It has caused some hurdles, if you will, on the institutional side of things, but the overall purpose is to make sure that tribes priorities are being emphasized rather than institutions priorities. Awesome. Okay. Well,
00:34:16
Speaker
I know that's just a brief 20 minute intro to duty of care and and we could go on for a lot longer. But when we come back after the break, I'd really love to get into some of the most common questions that you're all receiving and how you've been responding to people about them. So everyone stay tuned for that right after the break.
Common Questions About NAGPRA Compliance
00:34:41
Speaker
okay so Naturally, as always, the best conversations happening over the break. ah So I thought that, um, Blythe said something that was really important that I wanted everybody to hear. So Blythe, um, if you wouldn't mind sharing what you were sharing with us over the break.
00:35:04
Speaker
Yeah. I just wanted to reiterate that the point of the duty of care provision is to provide standards and guidelines to encourage care, not to prevent anyone from doing the work of complying with NAGPRA. Yeah. And I thought Jane Lee gave ah a great example of, you know, if a box is getting flooded, like ah duty of care doesn't mean that you leave it because you can't touch it. It means you take care of it.
00:35:29
Speaker
Yeah. Jane, like correct me if I, if I got that wrong, but I thought that was a good example of... No, that was right. And that's something that National NAGPRA has mentioned in some of the earlier webinars. For example, you know, you're not supposed to rehouse collections without consulting because the tribes, for example, may not want you to rehouse, but like if the bottom is going to fall out of the box or a pipe has burst in the museum and collections are getting soaked, then it would make no sense to continue to allow those collections to be damaged while you try to make a bunch of phone calls. You have to take care of the collection, you know, make sure that the collections are not damaged by falling out of the bottom of the box, that they're getting damaged by water damage. But then you are supposed to follow up after that with your tribal partners and let them know. Right. And like you mentioned before, actually going and getting the box if somebody else has it.
00:36:25
Speaker
Right. that You cannot take care of your collections if they are in someone else's facility. Right. Yeah. Okay. God, I wish you had all heard that that conversation in the break. It was great. But moving on. So for all of you, it sounds like you've all been getting lots of questions.
00:36:46
Speaker
from different people about how to apply these regulations and what is the most common question that each of you have been getting and and what have you been telling people about that. And if we have if you have other questions that we don't get to today, ah you can always send me an email, Jessica at livingheritageanthropology.org.
00:37:08
Speaker
And if we get enough questions, we'll do a follow-up episode. So if you have questions that that weren't covered today with this this brief, most frequently asked questions section, ah send yeah, again, send it to Jessica at livingheritageanthropology.org. And if we get enough, we'll we'll do a follow-up.
00:37:29
Speaker
So let's see, let's start with Jane Lee. I don't know if I can say that there's one specific question we get more than the others, but I would say that I have the, regardless of what the question is, the answer is most of the time the same. And the answer is to consult.
00:37:46
Speaker
Whether it's, well, we want to put this on exhibit. We don't know the affiliation or the age of this. We want to rehouse. What do we do if we haven't talked to that tribe before? What do we do if we've never done NAGPRA? What if our inventory is incorrect? Really, at the end of the day, you need to start consulting.
00:38:11
Speaker
reaching out to your tribal partners and starting that conversation rather than just Again, creating circular arguments at the end of the day, go nowhere, getting you no further towards any form of compliance. Stop what you're doing, stop panicking, start reaching out to your tribal partners and understand that everybody across the country right now is all in the same boat. And, and you know, I just think, ah you know, and and this might be also something Christiana can touch on. There's been a lot of panic
00:38:42
Speaker
in some of the questions that I received about how on earth could people hit a deadline in five years. A lot of people are realizing now that if they got CARES Act money, which is a form of federal funding, that prior to NAGPRA, they might not have had to comply. But now that they received CARES Act money, they do have to comply. And So I think at the end of the day, the question might be different, but the answer is always start consulting. I like that. All right. All right, I'll go. You got voluntold. Voluntold, yeah, I'll go. I secretly wait that I'm picked last, but let's see.
00:39:33
Speaker
I would say two of my most common questions that I've been receiving is that these smaller museums or private citizens will email me and tell me they have some collections that are Native American related, or they think they may have human remains in their possession. And it's never them that has it. It's always a friend that they're helping.
00:40:01
Speaker
And they always ask me what to do or how to go about getting it where it needs to go. And they always try to give it to me to work on, which I appreciate the thought, but I don't want to do other people's work who need to do the work.
00:40:24
Speaker
So I try to guide them as best as I can. I don't want to be discouraging or try to sound scary in any way. I try to guide them on what they should do, who they should reach out to. If I have to give them a copy of the law or kind of outline the steps for them on what they should do, I'll do that. I'll take that little bit of extra time in the hopes that they do the right thing.
00:40:52
Speaker
And one of the other common questions I get is usually from students or grad students who want to know how to get into NAGPRA, but they also want to know how to get hands-on practical experience. And I think their idea is to either volunteer with me or do an internship of some kind here with me, which I have not officially advertised yet. I probably will in the future, but they tend to ask me how to do what can they do for more experience. than I tend to start pointing them towards National NAGPRA's YouTube channel, which is
00:41:34
Speaker
It has some outdated videos, but still good, relevant information. I'll point them towards Christiana and Jane Lee with the instep training program, which I got to be a part of the first class
Resources and Training for NAGPRA Enthusiasts
00:41:48
Speaker
to go through that. I also went through NPI when I was a student, National Preservation Institute.
00:41:56
Speaker
But those are usually the things I point to, to begin. But I also explain how it's not that easy to just volunteer and start doing nag pit work. I try to explain that because it's a sensitive topic that could be emotional and traumatizing to some people that it's not something that they're just going to slide into and start working on. And that it's really something that has to be cared for and respected and, you know, some tribes may not want people to work on these types of topics. And especially if it's around ancestors and cultural items connected to their own communities. And those are my two most common. Also, before the next person goes, I do you want to say that we did an episode, episode 79 on the intensive ah
00:42:55
Speaker
instep, the instep program, the intensive NAGPRA summer training and education program. So if you want to learn more about instep specifically, go back and listen to episode 79. And I believe probably by the time this launches, you guys are going to be open for next year. Is that correct? For application applications for next year, we'll open on November 1st. Yes.
00:43:16
Speaker
Yes. Okay. So applications, we can put a link in the show notes to the webpage and Facebook page and anyone that's interested in in applying should go for it. Okay. So I don't know, Christiana or Blythe, who wants to go next? I can go ahead.
00:43:37
Speaker
We um at Illinois, we get a lot of similar questions to what Jane Lee and Chance have already mentioned. So I'm going to go a little bit of a different route here. I think probably the kinds of questions that I personally receive.
00:43:52
Speaker
quite a lot will be actually from other institutions that have NAGR collections that are curious whether they have any collections that are split with ours or loans to us or vice versa and what that looks like in terms of duty of care where we were just talking about the fact that you can't care for your collections if they are being curated by someone else.
00:44:16
Speaker
And so we have done since I started here, we've done quite a lot of reuniting loaned collections or sampled collections. We also get, we get a lot of questions about biological samples like those taken for stable isotope or ancient DNA analysis.
00:44:31
Speaker
i I've done a couple publications about this, so we get asked quite a lot. And I think those get overlooked a lot in the NAGPRA process. Most tribes that we have worked with consider those types of samples or DNA extracts and things like that to be part of the ancestor, even after they have been removed from the ancestor.
00:44:50
Speaker
And so those are very specific types of collections that are often not found in museums. They might still be in an ancient DNA laboratory, for example, that do also need to be reunited with the ancestors that they came from for repatriation. And so we answer a lot of questions about what that looks like. ah Transporting biological samples can be a little bit tricky.
00:45:13
Speaker
Some of them can be dangerous for a long time, for example, and require certain types of transportation. And so that's something that we tend to make suggestions and advise people on fairly often because of the history of scientific work at Illinois. And ah in Illinois and the Midwest, largely there was a lot of trading collections and loaning things to each other and taking things for biological analysis.
00:45:38
Speaker
And so that's just a little bit of a side point, but something that's very relevant that I think not everyone thinks about, but is you know extremely important when you're considering reuniting collections for repatriation and making sure that everyone is accounted for.
00:45:54
Speaker
OK, Blythe, last but not least. Yeah, I love being the last one because I feel like I can identify with everything, everyone. I have been working on trying to reunite some samples for the first time with an isotope lab in Georgia. And it seems like folks are just so much more aware of this being an issue now that it seems like asking that question isn't as hard as it may have been 10 or 20 years ago.
00:46:24
Speaker
The other thing that I'll say that we've been thinking about a lot because we do have, you know, an exhibit gallery and we have a variety of of people that come and visit us in the gallery, including Indigenous youth, is how we can better share any concerns about The fact that there are materials and ancestors in the space and that there are potentially objects that that people shouldn't be even near to, much less see. So really starting those conversations around duty of care and how to share you know that free prior and informed consent with visitors.
00:47:06
Speaker
is is a really interesting topic of conversation and I think a really necessary one specifically for Indigenous visitors. But I think that you know to sort of sum up the the point of NAGPRA, I have to quote Melanie O'Brien from a recent training where she mentions the wisdom of Vanilla Ice and says, you have to stop, collaborate, and listen. um And as long as you're doing that, you're on the right track.
Episode Summary and Contact Information
00:47:41
Speaker
Oh, I love it. Thank you, Melanie O'Brien. I feel like that needs to be some sort of like meme, Jessica, that you... ah Somebody do that. Stickers! There you go. Oh, that's awesome. Yeah, no, but put ah Dr. Davis on that.
00:48:07
Speaker
I think also, and I know that Christiana provided some links, but if Chris, if this wasn't national NAGPRA, especially towards the beginning of the year after the regulations were passed, put a lot of webinars out there. And so for folks looking for and a lot of those webinars, they're recorded and there's Melanie goes through and answers a whole bunch of questions. And so you can see the question in the chat and she, so for folks looking for other resources, that's also, you know, they're very specific questions that are being asked and, and they're pretty good places to start.
00:48:39
Speaker
Absolutely agree. And the other thing that I want to mention for any um emerging practitioners is and it's really essential to actually read the law, right? Read the law, read the regs. It's not the most engaging, but it's important to to get through it and refer often if you have a question. A lot of these things you can figure out by consulting the law and also having conversations with other practitioners.
00:49:09
Speaker
in spaces like I do want to mention the NAGPRA community of practice again. I know that Christiana I think mentioned it earlier is a really good place for those of us that might be newer to the process. And also I feel like a lot of the time even having been working in NAGPRA for a number of years, I can understand why folks would be a little intimidated and not really know where to start. So that really is a great place to start.
00:49:39
Speaker
And just to piggyback upon that as well, a lot of place, there's a lot of, there's the large community to practice, a lot of regions are creating their own smaller communities of practice that are region specific. But I mean, I think within these communities of practice, there are so many people that are willing to take a phone call, answer an email, help with a site visit, do that kind of thing. There's always somebody out there that's willing to answer a question or help with whatever it might be.
00:50:09
Speaker
What about conferences? Are there any good conferences?
00:50:14
Speaker
I mean, coming kind of close to you guys, the Society of American Archaeology Conference started last year at first NAGPRA day, which was really, really successful with a full day. I remember many years ago when NAGPRA was given the most undesirable conference slots. And then last year it was like a full day of panels and sessions and talks and posters and a meet and greet. And next year, the conference is in Denver and there will be, I think a little bit of a smaller version than last year, but, uh, another day to to kind of get together. Any, any other like resources, there's going to be a ton in the show notes. So everybody. check out the show notes if you're interested in learning more. Any other resources or things that you're itching to make sure everybody knows about the the new regulations? but Yeah, just a couple additional conference plugs. um The AIAI repatriation conference.
00:51:23
Speaker
And I think they they just moved it, and I believe it's in February, but we can provide a link to, the yeah, late February 2025. And I know that they were also doing not only in person, but a virtual component as well.
00:51:43
Speaker
And then also the the conference that I get to go to this year as a federal employee is ATOM, the Association of Tribal Archives Libraries and Museums, and that's another good one. I think, you know, there are so many opportunities to to have these conversations with different different groups of practitioners, different levels of understanding, and I think that um ah these discussions are are all valuable no matter where you have them.
00:52:12
Speaker
Awesome. Anyone else burning thoughts? Nope. Those are just the same ones I would recommend her bring up. Cool. Well, again, like we said before, send me an email, Jessica out living here to Janthropology.org. If you have burning questions for this panel and we'll see how many we get. And if we get enough, we'll do a follow-up episode to answer your questions. So.
00:52:42
Speaker
Again, Jessica at livingheritageanthropology.org. All right. Well, thank you all so much. I learned a huge amount. I'm definitely going to have to go back and re-listen again, you know, sitting in my jammers, whatever, take the time to to listen again. Cause there was lots of really good gems in there and it's, it's a lot to get a hold of or to, you know, get a grasp on, I guess is the better way to put it. So thank you so much for, for everything today. I i appreciate all of you. and Thanks. That was great talking with everybody. Yeah. Thank you for inviting us back. Yeah. Thanks to everyone.
00:53:23
Speaker
I mean, it's pretty clear we could definitely do another 10 episodes and not hit it all. But again, appreciate it so much.
00:53:35
Speaker
Thanks for listening to the Heritage Voices podcast. You can find show notes at www.archaeologypodcastnetwork.com slash Heritage Voices. Please subscribe to the show on iTunes, Stitcher, or the Google Play Music Store. Also, please share with your friends or write us a review. Sharing and reviewing helps more people find the show and gets to the perspectives of Heritage Voices amazing guests out there into the world. No, we just need more of that in anthropology and land management. If you have any more questions, comments, or show suggestions, please reach out to me at Jessica at livingheritageanthropology.org. If you'd like to volunteer to be on the show as a guest or even a co-host, reach out to me as well, Jessica at livingheritageanthropology.org. You can also follow more of what I'm doing on Facebook at Living Heritage Anthropology and the nonprofit Living Heritage Research Council, or on Twitter at LivingHeritageA. As always, huge thank you to Liable Enqua and Jason Nez for their collaboration on our incredible logo.
00:54:40
Speaker
This episode was produced by Chris Webster from his ah RV traveling the United States, Tristan Boyle in Scotland, DigTech LLC, Cultural Media, and the Archaeology Podcast Network, and was edited by Rachel Rodin. This has been a presentation of the Archaeology Podcast Network. Visit us on the web for show notes and other podcasts at www.archapodnet.com. Contact us at chrisatarchaeologypodcastnetwork.com.