The Native American Graves Protection and Repatriation Act, or NAGPRA,  gets a remarkable and engrossingly deep look by the journalists working for Science today. It is now 20 years since passage of procedures by which U.S. native tribes can demand return of human remains and archeological items taken from public lands and since placed in museums or other institutions. It has from the start meant not only that deep ethical wrongs may be corrected, but that research on the prehistory of North America can be hindered. Looted graveyards and displayed remains in glass cases can be deeply offensive both to the relatives of the people in the graves as well as to most right-minded people generally. But how does one identify which modern groups can make valid claims? From many scientists comes outrage that invaluable clues to the peopling of North America are being lost – buried or even cremated – in undue deference to superstition and myth.

One suspects most US readers of ksjtracker have already a rough handle on these things. Today’s Science in print and on line, freely readable to all (with registration), turns several writers loose on the issue -  contributing correspondent Andrew Lawler, free lancer Keith Kloor, and Science‘s European editor John Travis.  Ramrod to the effort was editor Elizabeth Culotta. Part of its intent is to elicit conversation among readers about their thoughts.

The overall package is here. A pdf is also available to reporters with access to the magazine’s SciPak at the EurekAlert press packaging service AAAS provides.

I’ve read rapidly through the lot and am impressed. The prime new issue is recent revision of the act, making it possible for today’s U.S. Indian nations to lay claim to remains and grave goods that are extremely old, or otherwise ambiguous. This is so even if researchers insist no affinity can be established. In some cases, they are certain there can be no direct link at all to any surviving people or culture. The word preposterous comes up.  Bones up to and even beyond 10,000 years of age, such as those of famed Kennewick Man found along the Columbia River, surely predate the migrations that led to the communities in the area today, they argue. Yet remains that old are becoming exceedingly difficult to study as tribes assert control of them.

It is a conundrum. Most Americans think there is little sacrilege in studying ancient remains of peoples of all sorts. Furthermore, separation of church and state, I suggest, gives a sense of sacrilege little legal standing. Yet oral histories and clearly religious beliefs including stories of special creation embraced by many Native Americans are being accorded standing equal or even superior to evidence-based argument. Seems simple enough that that’s not quite Constitutional, as one might infer from how public school science classes and mandatory airing of creationism are treated in court – except for the degree of autonomy and sovereignty also accorded native Americans by treaty. Gad, it is complicated. To give it a fair, broad airing is a journalistic challenge.

This package, a long time in the making, lets readers confront many points of view. There are not sides so much as a huge gradient of opinion among both Native Americans and others. There is a great deal of cooperation too. But just for one example of the issue’s intractability, try to read the Q & A by Keith Kloor with an archeologist who assisted in the reburial of remains of a Pueblo community’s ancestors and not be moved to deep sympathy with the act’s general aim, science or no science. This package is provocative. The conversation that ensues will, doubtless, have some very provoked people taking part. One hopes there are a few cooler heads, too.

By the way, Kloor at his Collide-a-Scape blog is providing more info from his reporting for the series, and says he expects to post within the next week further on the issues the package raises.

Related News:

The package includes an account of a hank of Lakota medicine man and chief Sitting Bull’s hair, efforts at DNA extraction, and hopes by descendants to settle some arguments. Thank you John Travis not only for being sure I noticed this package, but for pointing out that while it moves the ball forward,  it has no scoop on the essence of the Sitting Bull story. A writer who until recently worked at arch rival Nature got there first.

• Science News (Aug. 17) Alexandra Witze: Genome of a chief / Ancient DNA experts say they are analyzing a lock of Sitting Bull’s hair ;

- Charlie Petit

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