Nagpra

1.

The debate of the reburial of excavated Native American sites has been going on for quite some time now. I believe that the wealth of knowledge gained from these discovered artifacts and bones yield much more valuable information than simply placing them back into the ground, causing them to be lost forever. The remains of Pre-Columbian Native Americans should not be reburied and should be studied and documented for the sake of history and a better understanding of it.

After many years of looting of Native American burial sites, the Federal Government established The Native American Graves Protection and Repatriation Act (NAGPRA) in 1990 and is the primary federal legislation pertaining to graves and human remains in archaeological contexts. It was created to protect cemeteries on federal and tribal lands, and to provide a way to return the human skeletal material and associated funerary objects in the nation's scientific and museum collections to culturally affiliated tribes.

.

However, I feel this act forces archeologists to halt further investigations and possibly damages lost records of history. Returning these artifacts and bones prevents them from being preserved and checked for inaccuracies, which, at that point becomes the sole creditability from the researcher. Once these are placed back to their original site, new technologies in the lab and additional investigations are useless in their attempt to

2.

gain a better understanding of the culture and roots of the evidence. Genetic research on past civilizations requires hard evidence-bones and physical artifacts, not photographs.

In many cases, the bones cannot be returned simply because the ancestry line is missing somewhere along the line and no living person can prove any relationship. Many claims are made that the bones belong to a certain group and in return fight for bones of another tribe or enemies rather than long-lost relatives. Such was the case in 1996 when two young boat-racing enthusiasts in the middle of July stumbled across a skull alongside the Columbia River in Kennewick, Washington. This eventually led to fight between American Indians who believe nature should be left to take its course with the remains and scientists who want to study them. The man