Partnerships Developed during the Ancient One History and Next Steps to Building Better Partnerships – A Tribal Perspective

Summary

The Claimant Tribes worked whole-heartedly together for 20 years for the return of the Ancient One to his homelands. Throughout those twenty years, many partnerships were made with academia and federal agencies. However many challenges were encountered during the NAGPRA process. These challenges provided unexpected hurtles and trials for the Claimant Tribes in their fight for a cultural affiliation determination with the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers.

The range of challenges the Claimant Tribes faced and continue to struggle with encompass: demonstrating a continuous, documented history dating from 9000 years ago to present, absence of artifacts and analysis data from Columbia Plateau collections, maintaining collaborative and inclusive relationships between researchers and Tribes, conducting meaningful consultation, and ethical interpretations of NAGPRA. From a tribal perspective, the challenges can be overcome but will require outreach, training, research, ethical guidance, development of guidance documents, and possible legislative changes to NAGPRA’s inadvertent discovery regulations.

This presentation will provide an overview of the challenges and partnerships the Claimant Tribes made which resulted in examples and recommendations to remedy those challenges for the benefit of all our ancestors today and in the future.

This Resource is Part of the Following Collections

• Society for American Archaeology 83rd Annual Meeting, Washington, DC (2018)

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Record Identifiers

Abstract Id(s): 21425