Should Congress amend the Act to provide authority for legal actions to be brought by those who may qualify to serve as guardians for the purposes of invoking the Act to protect Native American human remains? Since a good portion of the law has become so technical that even knowledgeable, well educated persons cannot understand it within a reasonable period of time, it is difficult to comment in an informed manner on this question. In general, the Hawaii case denies that human remains, taken alone, have standing before the law, though courts have permitted suits to be filed on behalf of animals and ecosystems. Human remains are, by definition, dead in Western belief systems. The law is based on Western belief systems. Traditional Native Hawaiaan beliefs contradict this position since traditional Native Hawaiaan beliefs take human remains to be, in a very real sense, alive. Since the dominant society makes the rules it is unlikely, as borne out by the Hawaii ruling, that any court will be willing to accord human remains standing. The court did, as I understand the ruling, give Hui Malama standing in the case but it denied that the remains themselves could have standing. In short, it is unclear to me whether or not the court's decision requires additional Congressional action regarding guardianship. I am not clear that the court's ruling denied guardianship capacity on the part of Hui Malama. If I have failed to understand the ruling and the court denied Hui Malama guardianship capacity for these remains then I would support Congressional action that assures that Hui Malama and tribes have the ability to act as guardians over human remains with which they are affiliated. I appreciate the opportunity to address these issues and I look forward to working with the Committee and Congress in any way possible to assure the this important law, aimed at redressing a long history of injustice, be implemented effectively, equitably, and efficiently. am American of Museums Statement of William J. Moynihan, Ph.D. Milwaukee Public Museum On the Native American Graves Protection and Repatriation Act (P.L. 101-601) Presented to the Committee on Indian Affairs U.S. Senate December 6, 1995 Mr. Chairman and members of the Committee: I am William J. Moynihan, Ph.D., President of the Milwaukee Public Museum, presenting written testimony on behalf of my institution and on behalf of the American Association of Museums. As you know, in 1990 Congress passed and President Bush signed the Native American Graves Protection and Repatriation Act (P.L. 101-601 - “NAGPRA”). NAGPRA is remedial legislation enacted by Congress to ensure that Native American remains, funerary and certain other classifications of objects retained by the federal government and by the museum community are returned under the law to appropriate tribes and organizations for reburial or other appropriate care. The Milwaukee Public Museum is committed to fulfilling both the letter and the spirit of NAGPRA. This commitment is reflected in museums across this nation. It is the law of the land, it is accepted by the museum community, and we in the museum world have benefited from new and productive relationships with Native American groups as a result of NAGPRA. Allow me now a moment to describe the implementation of NAGPRA at the Milwaukee Public Museum as one specific example from the museum community. We are a mid-sized natural history museum with a budget $8 million, an FTE staff of 135, and collections of approximately 4.5 million specimens and artifacts, with an especially strong collection of Native American material. Our most recent permanent exhibit, “A Tribute to Survival," portrays a modern day powwow and has a strong Native American voice and interpretation within the exhibit. It is a source of pride for area tribes to such an extent that a local Native American group contributed $250,000 to this project, and numerous individuals from the community were involved in the development of its content and approach. Since NAGPRA was enacted, the Milwaukee Public Museum, previously a department of Milwaukee County, became a not-for-profit organization with its own Board of Directors. Our funding from Milwaukee County decreased by $1.5 million between 1990 and the present, and the Museum ran large deficits in 1992 and 1993. The level of staffing has been reduced 27% since NAGPRA was enacted (between 1990-1995), budgets were cut, and programs lost. It is within this budgetary context that the Museum's extraordinary efforts to implement NAGPRA need to be understood and judged. Our most recent estimates show that the Milwaukee Public Museum will have committed well in excess of half a million dollars by 1997 to deal with this legislation. Existing staff in our Anthropology/History Section have been reallocated from their normal duties to NAGPRA-related activities, a large team of volunteers assembled, and trained student interns and work-study students hired. The task has been a daunting one. The Museum has been collecting anthropological and archeological material for over 100 years. The collections include approximately 50,000 catalogued items in the North American archaeology area and 22,000 in the North American ethnology area. The remains of 1,500 individuals are included. Furthermore, the collections are not computerized, although efforts continue to secure the necessary funding. The records are uneven and extremely varied, reflecting changing professional standards over the 113-year history of the institution. Several moves in the history of the Museum have taken their toll on the records as have the ravages of time. Finally, this major effort was initiated at a time when the staff reductions and budget cuts previously mentioned were at their most severe. Even given these difficult circumstances, the level of accomplishment at the Museum in implementing NAGPRA is laudatory. Much has been accomplished, and I would emphasize more than anything else the positive and productive relationships between the museum and Native American groups which have resulted from this entire process. In addition: -A physical inventory of over 22,000 Native American ethnographic objects in the collections was completed prior to the November 16, 1993 deadline, - A preliminary inventory of the 50,000 archaeological objects was conducted; -Letters were sent to several hundred tribes by July 1993 notifying them that the -Further research and phone contacts were used to identify the tribal affiliations of -Summaries of Native American collections were sent to 572 federally recognized tribes and native Alaskan and Hawaiian groups before the November 16, 1993, deadline. These summaries included a description of the objects, categories, date of acquisition by the museum, number of objects, and a list of any material originating in a tribe's general region but for which the Museum lacked specific provenance information. -Phone calls were made to several hundred tribes to make sure the summaries had been received, to deal with any questions and to establish a human contact. Since November 1993, work on NAGPRA has continued and even intensified. Our staff has responded to numerous letters and telephone inquiries from tribes regarding their summary letters. Detailed packets of information have been sent to tribal representatives. We have gone beyond the requirements of the law by providing written documentation, photographs or drawings, and complete descriptions of objects as we have consulted with Native American groups. This has helped build a sense of credibility and confidence in our relationships with the tribes. The actual visits have been cordial and successful, and have given us a new understanding of the collections, but they have also been very time consuming for the staff. The staff has drawn upon this experience to make presentations to other museum professionals at meetings of the Midwest Museums Conference and the American Association of Museums, and has advised other museums of appropriate consultation methods and tribal visits. During this time, the Milwaukee Public Museum has also taken a leadership role in providing to tribal museums not only advice on the care of collections, and on building and improving their museums, but also professional training for staff. As museum professionals, we feel a responsibility to the collections and their preservation, no matter who holds them. The major focus of staff time since 1993 has been on the inventory of the North American archaeology collection, including human remains and associated funerary objects. This task proved to be even more complex than the previous work. The first step was a conventional physical inventory to ascertain the status of the archaeological collections in storage, on exhibit, and on loan, in comparison to existing catalogue records. Since the material was collected over a 100 year period, it was not organized according to any single system. Some of the collections were organized by locality, for example, where the only provenance was "Wisconsin." Others were grouped by type or broad regional traditions, such as "Old Copper Culture." And, of course, the collections were not computerized. - The staff then turned to a total physical inventory of the archaeology collections compiling detailed lists of contents of each drawer in storage, checking collections records, and verifying and correcting our records. Because of the poor state of records in this area of the collections, an enormous amount of time has been spent, but we do want to retain our credibility with Native American groups by providing complete and accurate information at the end of this phase of the NAGPRA requirements. Despite our good faith efforts - some might say because we did more than minimally required by the law -- and because of the size and condition of the archaeological collection, we have applied to the National Park Service for an extension of the November 16, 1995 deadline for the completion of inventories of human remains and associated funerary objects, and the consultation process which follows. The Milwaukee Public Museum, like the museum community in general, has also been hampered in its progress by the delay in the publication of the final regulations. Since passage of NAGPRA, five years -- and both NAGPRA deadlines -- have passed and we still do not have final regulations. This has left us in an ambiguous situation, not knowing if we are, in fact, in full compliance and spending a great deal of time consulting with colleagues at other institutions to determine consistent interpretations and definitions of the law. Even |