American Thinker

by Elizabeth Weiss

    Those working with archaeological collections in museums and universities were given guarantees that the law would not empty the display cases and curation rooms, because artifacts that did not fall into the above-mentioned categories would remain in museum and university facilities for both research and display.

    Moreover, human remains and artifacts not affiliated with any modern, federally recognized tribe were to be classified as culturally unidentifiable, and these too could remain in institutions for research and display.

    Objects specifically made for display, such as museum quality replicas of artifacts, or items for commercial sale (such as contemporary artwork and trade replicas) were also to be excluded from repatriation efforts.

    Thus, NAGPRA was, as initially conceived, a compromise. Upholding that compromise, a review committee was to monitor the inventory and identification process to “ensure a fair, objective consideration and assessment of all available relevant information and evidence.”

    But more recently, especially since the December 2023 regulatory guidelines, the compromise has failed. The 2023 regulatory guidelines no longer consider scientific research or public display important.

    Additionally, contemporary artworks, such as those from Harry Fonseca, have been claimed by tribes as items of cultural patrimony. Even replicas, made as recently as 1994, are being repatriated as items of cultural patrimony, such as the replica cocoon rattle made by Native Americans Craig and Carson Bates, which was donated to Florida Museum of Natural History in 2012.

    Yet, Native American tribal consultants are far from finished in their attempt to destroy our ability to study and understand America’s prehistoric past.

    At the last NAGPRA meeting of 2025, a representative from the Association on American Indian Affairs argued that “NAGPRA regulations support the repatriation of all information obtained” from human remains and artifacts. She added that “the physical item and the knowledge, spirit, or information it embodies are inseparable.” She went on to argue that “a photograph of sacred items captures and reproduces their sacred qualities. Field notes describing funerary associations replicate sacred knowledge.”

    She claimed “[i]t would be an absurd result to repatriate ancestors, yet allow a museum to retain the data, the DNA sequence, osteological report, and images that can constitute the very identity of the individual.” She concluded with a call to return all research projects to tribes.

    Incredibly, this call to repatriate, and, therefore, destroy data was not met with incredulity. The NAGPRA committee instead encouraged the representative to submit specific regulatory language that may make it possible to carry out such changes.

    The destruction of data, even without further changes to regulatory guidelines, has already begun. In a first ever case, a January 7, 2026 notice of repatriation from the Fowler Museum, associated with University of California, Los Angeles, listed photographic negatives as “objects of cultural patrimony” to repatriate.

    The loss of these photographic negatives, which contain images of petroglyphs from the Black Canyon site in San Bernardino County, may occur as soon as February 6, 2026.

    If the negatives are destroyed, will the tribe next seek out copies of the 1973 book Prehistoric Rock Art of California by Robert F. Heizer and C. William Clewlow that contains these images and destroy those too  The repatriation of these negatives may seem minor, but they open the door to similar repatriations -- and, ultimately, to the burning of books.

    For those who think this is hyperbole, the latest round of notices of repatriation includes two notices to repatriate books: one coming from Turtle Bay Exploration Park in Redding, California; and, the other coming from Berkshire Museum in Pittsfield, Massachusetts.

    NAGPRA started as a compromise between Native American tribes on the one hand and scientists and academics on the other. It has now been hijacked by activists, and has become part-joke and part-grift -- at taxpayers’ expense. The NAGPRA committee seems unable or unwilling to do anything more than rubberstamp increasingly ridiculous requests.

    The only way to stop this destruction of knowledge is to repeal NAGPRA.

    Elizabeth Weiss is a professor emeritus of anthropology at San José State University, a National Association of Scholars Board Member, and the author of On the Warpath: My Battles with Indians, Pretendians, and Woke Warriors (2024, Academica Press).