It’s Fall Semester of 2021, and Padma Patel is a new instructor at Mapletree University. She has experience working in curation, field methods, and lab protocols. They have hired her to teach introductory classes and hold a summer field school. Upon starting her position, she is told by the department chair that because of her experience with curation, she needs to catalogue the university’s Native American collection of human remains and, if possible, use them to teach her courses. While doing this, Padma realizes the university conducted field excavations that uncovered human remains in 1996 and 1999. Ph.D. students and faculty members then did destructive analyses—taking samples of bone for radio-carbon dating and DNA analysis. They also co-mingled bones from different individuals. She discovers the university has not communicated with any tribes since 1993 and never submitted a NAGPRA inventory. The department chair says because the collections are culturally unidentifiable, there is no need to consult any tribes, and students are allowed and encouraged to do research. He expects she will start work next week helping a student, Mary Post, with a proposed project to take samples from bones for stable isotope testing.
