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Some scholars are more concerned about ‘righting the wrongs of the past’ than scientific research, anthropologist says
Expansions and misinterpretations of a federal law that governs the handling of Native American artifacts are hindering historical research at the University of Arizona’s museum and other public institutions, according to a new report from the Goldwater Institute.
Elizabeth Weiss, the author of the report, “The Reburial of the Southwest: Closing Off Native History and Archaeology,” wrote about how recent expansions of the federal Native American Graves and Repatriation Act are preventing scientists from conducting research.
These changes also are leading to the unjust removal of historical items from museums and sometimes even hindering women’s participation in research, according to the report.
Weiss, a professor emeritus of anthropology at San José State University and leading voice against the federal law’s expansion, believes that many scholars and students in history-related fields are now more concerned with identity politics than scientific discovery.
“No longer are anthropology students and young scholars interested in reconstructing the past,” Weiss shared with The College Fix in a recent email. “Rather, they’re obsessed with ‘righting the wrongs of the past,’ which they define as undoing the colonization of the Americas.”
The Native American Graves and Repatriation Act, or NAGPRA, was established in 1990 to protect tribal human remains from desecration. The law also includes protections for funerary objects, sacred objects, and objects of cultural patrimony, which are defined as “having ongoing historical, traditional, or cultural importance central to the Native American group or culture itself.”
However, under recent regulatory changes, items originally not covered by the repatriation law are now being removed from museums and universities, according to the report.
For example, eagle feathers were removed from the Arizona State Museum, run by the University of Arizona, in 2011 and repatriated to a tribe.
The feathers, which were used in healing rituals, were purchased from a Native American in 1938 and bought by the museum the following year. A federal repatriation notice states that the feathers were removed from the museum because they were considered sacred and part of cultural patrimony, according to the report.
However, Weiss’s report states that “these feathers were not ancient, and were not obtained illegally or against anyone’s will.”
The College Fix reached out to the university museum director as well as the museum repatriation coordinator twice over the past two weeks via email. Neither responded to inquiries about the museum’s repatriation process or their thoughts on the Goldwater Institute report.
In the report, Weiss highlighted another change to the federal law that she believes is concerning. Initially, the law permitted the repatriation of human remains if there was proven “cultural affiliation” to an existing tribe.
However, in 2024, the Department of the Interior removed the “culturally unidentifiable human remains” category, which had formerly allowed scientists to keep unidentified bodies for research and display in museums.
Now, human remains may be repatriated to tribes without sufficient evidence to suggest that the remains belonged to that tribe, according to the report. In some cases cited in the report, Paleoindians, or remains of humans that predate the existence of modern Native American tribes, were removed from museums or universities and given to modern tribes for reburial, the report states.
Weiss wrote that these changes to the federal law are making it increasingly difficult to conduct research with human remains.
According to her report: “NAGPRA requires permission from every relevant tribe before remains may be studied. As a result, research can be blocked even by inaction: if any one of the half-dozen tribes listed on a NAGPRA notice does not respond, the remains remain off-limits.”
Remains that span 100,000 years of history continue to be discovered, yet anthropologists and archaeologists are being prevented from researching them, Weiss wrote.
Meanwhile, she wrote that information that is vital to gaining an understanding of North American prehistory is being reburied and destroyed.
MORE: UCLA staff ‘talk to’ lonely Native American museum pieces at tribe’s request
What’s more, the changes are sometimes preventing females from participating in research of tribal artifacts.
In 2023, the federal government added a “duty of care” component to the law that requires museums and scientists to make “a reasonable and good-faith effort to incorporate and accommodate the Native American traditional knowledge of lineal descendants, Indian Tribes, or Native Hawaiian organizations in the storage, treatment, or handling of human remains or cultural items.”
As a result, according to Weiss’s report, professionals may be required to adhere to ancient traditions, such as cultural stigmas against menstruating women. This means that women could be kept from participating in research in order to comply with the federal law.
In one example cited in the report, the Makah Cultural and Research Center on the Makah Indian reservation in Neah Bay, Washington, “practices ‘traditional curation,’ which excludes females from handling certain artifacts.”
In another, “[a]t the Smithsonian Arctic Studies Center’s collaboration with the Anchorage Museum at Rasmuson Center, Inuit elders informed an all-women project team that the materials they had planned to study could not be handled by females; thus, the team found a male colleague from the museum staff to handle at least one object for them,” according to the report.
Weiss’s report, published at the end of May, focuses on the southwestern U.S., where the Goldwater Institute is located. The thinktank advocates for individual liberties and freedoms guaranteed by the U.S. Constitution.
But one scholar told The College Fix that the problems with NAGPRA are more widespread than just the Southwest.
Wyoming State Archaeologist Spencer Pelton said the report accurately reflects what the scientific community is seeing, but it does not encompass all of the effects of the law.
This “is just the tip of the iceberg,” he told The Fix in a recent email. “For every issue/example in that report, there are 10+ more. It’s a deep well.”
He said public access to artifacts is dwindling across the U.S.
“It is currently hard to find public examples of North American prehistory in museums, and new academic research on North American prehistory is now effectively prohibited in, I would guess, around 1/3 of U.S. states,” he said.
Pelton expressed similar concerns to Weiss about the ideology driving these changes.
“The notion that archaeology is an inherently harmful pursuit is complete nonsense, a fabrication of modern activists either ignorant of that legacy or lying to enact their policy agendas,” he told The Fix.
Meanwhile, Weiss told The Fix that future archaeologists and anthropologists will lack the tools they need to be properly trained unless changes are made.
Weiss believes the federal repatriation law needs to be reformed to protect scientific endeavors and cultural preservation.
“The path forward lies not in abandoning NAGPRA entirely, but in restoring the balance Congress originally intended,” she told The Fix.
MORE: ‘We owe it to science’ is ‘unacceptable’: Indiana U. training prioritizes ‘tribal knowledge’
