Originally passed in 1990, the Native American Graves Protection and Repatriation Act got the new set of guidelines from the National Park Service in January of this year.
The guidelines give tribes more authority in claiming and requesting items that belong to them. In the past, museums have pushed back or found loopholes to comply with the law.
Many Oklahoma tribes such as the Cherokee Nation, Delaware Tribe of Indians and Cheyenne & Arapaho Tribes have been busy consulting and cataloging items they own in museums across the nation, as reported on by the Associated Press.
Cheyenne & Arapaho Tribes Gov. Reggie Wassana said his tribe is currently planning to build a museum to house their items. Until then, the museums have signed agreements promising to hold them until they can be moved. Some institutions, such as the First Americans Museum in Oklahoma City, are also holding on to some objects for his tribe in the meantime.
According to him, this has allowed his tribe to reclaim their history.
“A lot of museums have an object and will maybe mislabel it and teach the wrong historical value or historical event (of the object),” Wassana said. “It’s just good that the tribes can (now) tell their own story.”
Some items, such as funerary objects or human remains, are mandated to be hidden from sight out of respect or brought home for proper burial.
Cheyenne Resource Specialist Chester Whiteman said recovering these remains is important to him because he gets to show the deceased the respect they deserve.
“Let’s send them home,” Whiteman said. “Let’s give them a rest-in-peace type of atmosphere. It’s just part of our life, to take care of our ancestors.”
The new guidelines set a five-year deadline for museums to catalog and report all Native artifacts within their collections.
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