Altered Meanings: The Department of the Interior’s Rewriting of the Native American Graves Protection and Repatriation Act to Regulate Culturally Unidentifiable Human Remains

Ryan M. Seidemann, Louisiana Department of Justice

Abstract

Since 1990, there has been much debate - within the governmental, scientific, Native American, and legal arenas - as to the applicability of the Native American Graves Protection and Repatriation Act (NAGPRA) to culturally unidentifiable human remains. This article concludes that there is no statutory authorization to apply NAGPRA to such remains by analyzing the history of NAGPRA, the Department of the Interior's (DOI) recent attempt to promulgate draft regulations on this topic and the years' worth of consideration of this topic by the NAGPRA Review Committee. These draft regulations, which would, if given effect, mandate the repatriation of virtually all culturally unaffiliated human remains, are analyzed both for their consistency with the organic legislation and for their relationship to the current debate over such remains. Based upon this analysis, DOI's draft regulations are inconsistent with NAGPRA and are out of step with the current debate over culturally unidentifiable human remains.