Description of Project
Project Title: Learning NAGPRA: Resources for Teaching and Training
Funding Agency: National Science Foundation
Home Institution: Indiana University (IU)
In 2014 and 2015, researchers from Indiana University received National Science Foundation funding (grants 1449465, 1540447) through their Cultivating Cultures of Ethical STEM initiative to study how repatriation is taught and learned, to meet with educators, professionals, and students at conferences, and to develop interventions to improve the resources available. The project grew from realizations that many institutions lagged on equipping new researchers with the ethical grounding that NAGPRA requires. The project included the several goals.
- Understanding and identifying the level of ethical awareness and practice among scientists and researchers who work with Native American materials.
- Foster better implementation of and compliance with the law,
- Support archaeology done with Native Americans as opposed to about Native Americans.
We sought information about curriculum and teaching to see where and how NAGPRA is taught and encountered. Worked with educators at both tribal or tribal-serving, and non-tribal universities for insight on the effects of adding NAGPRA-related content in courses. We learned students trained in museum studies and anthropology at universities learn about repatriation in the context of collections, while more culturally engaged education at tribal colleges helps students contextualize past people as ancestors. Comparing tribal educational approaches with non-tribal institutional/academic approaches may provide insight into why institutions have been slow to integrate NAGPRA training into mainstream curriculum. The “Learning NAGPRA” project prioritizes a more thorough understanding of the challenges and bottlenecks in preparing professionals for work related to NAGPRA and repatriation. It also seeks better ways to assist learners at different points throughout their education on issues relating to professional ethics, working with human subjects, building cultural competency and relationships with Native American communities, and NAGPRA consultation and compliance. The project has worked, in collaboration with tribal colleges and participants, to look beyond traditional Euroamerican pedagogy, to find methods that speak to both indigenous and non-indigenous students.
The first year focused on background research and project planning aimed to understand the perspectives and priorities of students and educators in learning and teaching about ethics and, more specifically, NAGPRA in anthropology and museum studies programs. A core component of the grant through its first three years was the Learning NAGPRA Collegium, a workshop done in three consecutive years. The Collegiums brought together graduate students, educators, museum professionals, tribal cultural specialists, and members of professional organizations to discuss and then construct educational methods and materials in different formats. The result is the Learning NAGPRA website, which acts as a hub where a site visitor can hear a talk, explore a case study, connect to other NAGPRA-related resources, consult the wisdom of NAGPRA experts both tribal and non-tribal, or find materials to add to course planning.
In its first phase of the project, the Learning NAGPRA team collected data to understand how students learn and educators teach about the Native American Graves Protection and Repatriation Act, and assembled an extensive group of participants from tribes and institutions.
These are the ways we collected data and collaborated to address curriculum needs:
- conducting interviews with educators, students, and repatriation professionals
- sending online surveys to students and faculty in anthropology- and museum studies-related programs, and to members of professional societies
- requesting and analyzing course syllabi
- collecting anthropology and museum studies textbooks to analyze how they discuss NAGPRA
- tracking the results of adding NAGPRA curriculum to extant courses
- three Learning NAGPRA collegiums. We held the first two Collegiums at Indiana University in Bloomington, and the third in Santa Fe at the Institute for American Indian Arts.
