Latest news with #NAGPRA
Yahoo
05-05-2025
- General
- Yahoo
Tulsa's Gilcrease Museum to repatriate remains, artifacts to various Oklahoma tribes
The Tulsa skyline is pictured. (Getty Images) Gilcrease Museum in Tulsa is repatriating thousands of Native items, including human remains, back to Oklahoma tribes. This latest deaccession is part of the museum's years-long effort to return tribal artifacts under the Native American Grave Protection and Repatriation Act. Named after Muscogee Creek citizen Thomas Gilcrease, the museum houses a comprehensive collection of history from the American West, including items from numerous Indigenous tribes. According to deaccession records first reported on by News On 6 and notices to the federal registrar, the museum will return almost 100 remains and thousands of artifacts to various tribes in and outside the state. For Oklahoma, 64 ancestors and 1,322 funerary objects will be returned to the Osage Nation, Citizen Potawatomi Nation, Eastern Shawnee Tribe, Kaw Nation, Miami Tribe of Indians, Otoe-Missouria Tribe, Quapaw Nation, Peoria Tribe of Indians, Ponca Tribe of Indians, Sac and Fox Nation, Shawnee Tribe and numerous tribes in other parts of the country. The artifacts and remains came from Pike County, Illinois. According to ProPublica's repatriation tracker, since NAGPRA's implementation, the Gilcrease Museum of Tulsa has decreased its human remains collection from 600 to 200. SUBSCRIBE: GET THE MORNING HEADLINES DELIVERED TO YOUR INBOX
Yahoo
10-03-2025
- General
- Yahoo
IU completes its first international repatriation of human remains to Easter Island
In the quarry at Rano Raraku, ancient matamu'a carved the stone monuments known as moai, which represent ancestors who have passed away. The Rapa Nui people have increased efforts in recent years to bring their ancestors home through international repatriation. (Photo by Josefina Nahoe) Indiana University has completed its first international repatriation of human remains to the Rapa Nui people of Easter Island. A news release said IU's Jayne-Leigh Thomas visited the island in December as an invited guest of Rapa Nui representatives and is working with them on several research projects focused on the ethics of repatriation. 'To know that I played a small part in returning these Rapa Nui ancestors to Easter Island is overwhelming and so personally rewarding,' said Thomas, executive director of IU's Office of the Native American Graves Protection and Repatriation Act. 'To be so warmly welcomed onto the island, to build relationships with Rapa Nui representatives, and to have the opportunity to see the rich cultural heritage and visit archaeological sites was simply incredible.' Thomas said the remains were donated to IU in the 1990s by David M. Lodge, a descendent of U.S. Navy Rear Adm. George Henry Cooke. As a surgeon and medical officer, Cooke was assigned to Ulysses S. Grant's detail during the ex-president's circumnavigation of the world from 1877 to 1879. He later served aboard the USS Mohican, which visited Easter Island in 1886 to collect large stone sculptures, known as moai, for the Smithsonian Institute. SUBSCRIBE: GET THE MORNING HEADLINES DELIVERED TO YOUR INBOX Cooke's Smithsonian report repeatedly mentions Pakomio Mā'ori, a Rapa Nui survivor of the Peruvian slave raids of 1862. That man's great-great-grandson, Francisco Nahoe, a Catholic priest and Franciscan friar, worked with Thomas on this repatriation. The release said the Rapa Nui people have been very active in repatriation in recent years, working with individuals and institutions in New Zealand, Australia, Norway, Canada, the United States and Chile to locate their ancestors' remains and bring them home to Easter Island. Nahoe is the North American delegate of Te Mau Hatu, the Easter Island council of elders, for recovery and repatriation. Nahoe attended IU's Intensive NAGPRA Summer Training and Education Program in 2024 with his cousin, Rapa Nui archaeologist Susana Nahoe. The INSTEP program, which Thomas directs, offers best practices regarding the repatriation of ancestral remains and cultural objects under the Native American Graves Protection and Repatriation Act. Because few programs exist to support repatriation efforts internationally, and NAGPRA offers a roadmap for repatriation that can be replicated worldwide, there has been increased interest from people around the world to attend this training program. 'IU is fully committed to our NAGPRA work and has several large repatriation projects underway with numerous federally recognized tribal nations, but we also support the return of all Indigenous human remains, not just those from the United States,' IU Vice President for Research Russell J. Mumper said. 'We are focused on creating strong partnerships and developing mutually beneficial research projects that highlight repatriation, ethical museum practices and archaeological scholarship with Indigenous communities in the U.S. and abroad.'
Voice of America
01-03-2025
- Entertainment
- Voice of America
Native American news roundup Feb. 23 – March 1, 2025
Julian Brave NoiseCat up for an Oscar at Sunday's Academy Awards Secwepemc citizens of the Williams Lake First Nation in British Columbia will gather at Academy Award watch parties Sunday as Julian Brave NoiseCat vies for an Oscar for the documentary 'Sugarcane.' NoiseCat, a citizen of the Secwepemc Nation's Canim Lake Band, co-directed the film alongside American journalist and filmmaker Emily Kassie. The documentary investigates unmarked graves at St. Joseph's Mission School, exposing harrowing evidence of systematic rape, torture and infanticide. Through conversations with survivors, 'Sugarcane' highlights the lasting impact of the residential school system. "We stood alongside our participants as they dug graves for their friends, searched for painful truths in the recesses of their memories, and mustered the courage to confront representatives of the Church," the directors said in a statement. "You can feel their hesitation … as they struggle to confront their deepest secrets and give voice to their shame." For NoiseCat, the story is deeply personal. His father, Ed Archie NoiseCat, was born at St. Joseph's and abandoned as an infant atop the school's incinerator. In one of the film's most haunting moments, a former student recounts watching, from a hiding place, as a crying baby was tossed into the flames. Ed Archie NoiseCat is believed to be the only child fathered by a Catholic priest at the school who survived. This nomination marks the first time an Indigenous North American filmmaker has been recognized in this category by the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences. Read about the full FLFN investigation here: ProPublica update on NAGPRA compliance shows progress, but much work remains Museums, universities and other agencies across the United States returned to tribes the remains of more than 10,300 Native American ancestors in 2024, the investigative nonprofit ProPublica reported this week as part of its ongoing investigation into compliance with the Native American Graves Protection and Repatriation Act (NAGPRA). Passed in 1990, the law requires all federal and federally funded institutions to inventory, report and repatriate all Native American human remains and culturally or spiritually significant artifacts. NAGPRA previously allowed institutions to retain artifacts whose tribal affiliation they could not determine. Rules updated in 2024 removed that provision and gave tribal historians and religious leaders a greater voice in determining where those items should go. ProPublica reports that 60% of indigenous ancestral remains subject to NAGPRA have so far been repatriated, but at least 90,000 remain in nationwide collections. Read more: Native Americans Severely Underrepresented in Medical School Admissions STAT News highlights a 22% drop in American Indian and Alaska Native (AI/AN) medical school enrollment last year: Out of 21,000 acceptances nationwide, only 201 were indigenous. Medical education leaders Dr. Donald Warne and Dr. Mary Owen express concern that indigenous physicians have remained less than 1% of all U.S. doctors for decades. At this rate, it would take more than a century for the number of Native American physicians to reach parity with their percentage of the overall population. STAT reporting partly blames inflation, which has driven up medical school costs. The COVID pandemic had a disproportionate impact on Native communities, where limited broadband access meant many students were unable to study remotely. Compounding matters is the 2023 Supreme Court ruling ending affirmative action in college enrollment. Leaders in Native American medical education emphasize that AI/AN is primarily a political classification for enrolled members of federally recognized tribes protected by treaty rights, so that they should not have been affected by the ruling against race-based admissions policies. Read more: Oklahoma tribe fights for control of former boarding school site in Kansas The Shawnee Tribe wants ownership of the site of a former Native American boarding school, with Shawnee Chief Ben Barnes telling Kansas lawmakers that it was 'built on Shawnee lands by Shawnee hands and using Shawnee funds.' The Kansas Historical Society, the city of Fairway, and the local nonprofit that now runs the Shawnee Indian Manual Labor School all oppose the transfer, citing concerns over historical preservation. The school opened in 1839 and included children from 22 tribes, mostly Shawnee and Delaware. Records show that at least five children died there in the 1850s. The school closed in 1862 and was later used as barracks for Union soldiers and as a stop on the Oregon, California and Santa Fe trails. Read more:
