Suggested Reading: Books and Edited Volumes
Atalay, S., Clauss, L. R., McGuire, R. H., & Welch, J. R. (ed.) (2014). Transforming archaeology: Activist practices and prospects. Left Coast Press.
Burke, H. D., Lippert, D., Watkins, J. E., Zimmerman, L., & Smith, C. E. (2008). Kennewick man: perspectives on the ancient one. Left Coast Press.
Chari, S. and J. Lavallee (ed.) (2013). Accomplishing NAGPRA: perspectives on the intent, impact, and future of the Native American Graves Protection and Repatriation Act. Corvallis (OR): Oregon State University Press.
Fine-Dare, K. S. (2002). Grave injustice: the American Indian repatriation movement and NAGPRA. Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press.
Killion, T.W. (ed.) (2008). Opening archaeology: repatriation’s impact on contemporary research & practice. Santa Fe (NM): School for Advanced Research.
McKeown, C.T. (2012). In the Smaller Scope of Conscience: the struggle for national repatriation legislation 1986-1990. Tucson: University of Arizona Press.
Mihesuah, D.A. (ed.) (2000). Repatriation reader: who owns American Indian remains? Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press.
Swidler, N., Dongoske, K., Anyon, R., & Downer, A. (ed.) (1997). Native Americans and archaeologists: stepping stones to common ground. Rowman Altamira.
TallBear K. (2013). Native American DNA: Tribal Belonging and the False Promise of Genetic Science. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press
Thomas, D. H. (2001). Skull Wars: Kennewick Man, Archaeology, And The Battle For Native American Identity. Basic Books.
Suggested Reading: Articles and Chapters
Atalay, S. (2006). Indigenous archaeology as decolonizing practice. The American Indian Quarterly, 30(3), 280-310.
--. (2008). Multivocality and Indigenous archaeologies. In Evaluating Multiple Narratives (pp. 29-44). Springer New York.
Blakey, M. L. (1998). Beyond European enlightenment: Toward a critical and humanistic human biology. Building a new biocultural synthesis: Political-economic perspectives on human biology, 379-405.
--. (2008). An Ethical Epistemology of Publicly Engaged Biocultural Research. In Evaluating Multiple Narratives (pp. 17-28). Springer New York.
Brown, M. and M. Bruchac. (2006). NAGPRA from the Middle Distance: Legal Puzzles and Unintended Consequences. In Imperialism, Art, and Restitution (pp. 193-217). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Available at academia.edu
Bruchac, M. (2010). Lost and Found: NAGPRA, Scattered Relics and Restorative Methodologies. Museum Anthropology, 33(2), 137-156. Available at academia.edu
Kakaliouras, A. M. (2008). Toward a “new and different” osteology: a reflexive critique of physical anthropology in the United States since the passage of NAGPRA. Opening archaeology: repatriation’s impact on contemporary research and practice, 109-129.
--. (2012). An Anthropology of Repatriation. Current Anthropology, 53(S5), S210-S221.
Lippert, D. (2005). Remembering humanity: how to include human values in a scientific endeavor. International Journal of Cultural Property, 12(02), 275-280.
--. (2008) Not the End, Not the Middle, But the Beginning: Repatriation as a Transformative Mechanism for Archaeologists and Indigenous Peoples. In Collaboration in Archaeological Practice: Engaging Descendant Communities. Chip Colwell-Chanthaphonh and T. J. Ferguson, eds. Pp. 119-130. Lanham, Md.: AltaMira Press.
Riding In, J. (2012). Human Rights and the American Indian Repatriation Movement: A Manifesto. Ariz. St. LJ, 44, 613.
TallBear, K. (2013). Genomic articulations of indigeneity. Social Studies of Science, 43(4):509–33.
Tsosie, R. (1997a). Indigenous peoples' claims to cultural property: a legal perspective. Museum Anthropology, 21, 5.
--. (1997b). Indigenous rights and archaeology. Native Americans and archaeologists: stepping stones to common ground, 68
--. (2012). NAGPRA and the Problem of Culturally Unidentifiable Remains: The Argument for a Human Rights Framework. Ariz. St. LJ, 44, 809.
Watkins, J. (2003). Archaeological Ethics and American Indians. Ethical issues in archaeology, 129-141.
--. (2004) Becoming American or Becoming Indian?: NAGPRA, Kennewick and Cultural Affiliation. Journal of Social Archaeology 4(1):60-80.
Recent Publications
The RPA released their Archaeological Ethics Database, which contains over 500 resources related to NAGPRA and other archaeological ethics issues.
The January 2015 issue of the SAA Archaeological Record is themed "NAGPRA and the Next Generation of Collaboration". Read the free PDF online here
Archaeology talk draws fire. (2021). Science, 371(6540), 325–326.
Arnold, B., & Jeske, R. J. (2014). The Archaeology of Death: Mortuary Archaeology in the United States and Europe 1990-2013. Annual Review of Anthropology, 43: 325-346.
Atalay, S., Bonanno, L., Galman, S. C., Jacqz, S., Rybka, R., Shannon, J., Speck, C., Swogger, J., & Wolencheck, E. (2019). Ethno/Graphic Storytelling: Communicating Research and Exploring Pedagogical Approaches through Graphic Narratives, Drawings, and Zines. American Anthropologist, 121(3), 769–772. https://doi-org.proxyiub.uits.iu.edu/10.1111/aman.13293
Bardill, J. (2014). Native American DNA: Ethical, Legal, and Social Implications of an Evolving Concept. Annual Review of Anthropology, 43: 155-166.
Bartman Watson, A. (2017). Mediating NAGPRA: Bringing Cultural Consideration Back to the Table. Ohio State Journal on Dispute Resolution, 32(1), 171–iv.
Baugher, S. & Veit, R. (2014). The Archaeology of American Cemeteries and Gravemarkers. University Press of Florida.
Bienkowski, P. (2015). A Critique of Museum Restitution and Repatriation Practices. The International Handbooks of Museum Studies 3(19):431-453.
Bissett, T.G. & Classen, C.P. (2016). Portable x-ray fluorescence in sourcing prehistoric whelk shell artifacts: a pilot study from Eastern North America. North American Archaeologist. doi: 10.1177/0197693116631675
Blustain, M.S. & Wheeler, R. (2018). Glory, Trouble, and Renaissance at the Robert S. Peabody Museum of Archaeology. University of Nebraska Press.
Booth, L. (2015). Spirits up for Sale: Advocating for the Adoption of Ethical Guidelines to Govern the Treatment of Sacred Objects by Auction Houses. Georgetown Journal of Legal Ethics 28: 393-415.
Burelle, J. (2015). Theatre in Contested Lands: Repatriating Indigenous Remains. TDR/The Drama Review, 59(1): 97-118.
Caison, G. (2019). Imagining Possibility within Policy: LeAnne Howe’s Shell Shaker and Louis Owens’s Bone Game. Native South, 12(1), 30–51.
Callaway, E. (2014). Ancient genome stirs ethics debate. Nature, 506(7487): 142-143.
Champney, T. (2016). The business of bodies: Ethical perspectives on for-profit body donation companies. Clinical Anatomy 29(1):25-29.
Chavarria, A. & McBrinn, M. (2015). Museum Anthropology: Continued Conversations in the Field. Museum Anthropology 38: 3-14.
Colwell, C. (2014). The Sacred and the Museum: Repatriation and the Trajectories of Inalienable Possessions. Museum Worlds: Advances in Research, 2(1): 10-24.
Colwell, C. (2015). Curating Secrets: repatriation, knowledge flows, and museum power structures. Current Anthropology 56(S12): S263-S275.
Colwell, C. (2019). Can Repatriation Heal the Wounds of History? Public Historian, 41(1), 90–110.
Cortez, A. D., Bolnick, D. A., Nicholas, G., Bardill, J., & Colwell, C. (2021). An ethical crisis in ancient DNA research: Insights from the Chaco Canyon controversy as a case study. Journal of Social Archaeology, 1.
Cottrell, C. (2020). NAGPRA’s Politics of Recognition Repatriation Struggles of a Terminated Tribe. American Indian Quarterly, 44(1), 59–85. https://doi-org.proxyiub.uits.iu.edu/10.5250/amerindiquar.44.1.0059
DeWitte S. N. (2015). Bioarchaeology and the Ethics of Research Using Human Skeletal Remains. History Compass, 13(1):10–19. doi: 10.1111/hic3.12213.
Dickerson, A. & Ceeney, E. (2015). Repatriating Human Remains: searching for an acceptable ethics. T. Ireland and J. Schofield (ed.) The Ethics of Cultural Heritage: 89-104. Springer New York.
Edgar, H. J.H. and Rautman, A. L.M. (2014). Contemporary Museum Policies and the Ethics of Accepting Human Remains. Curator: The Museum Journal, 57: 237–247. doi: 10.1111/cura.12064
Genovese, T. (2016). Decolonizing archival methodology: Combating hegemony and moving towards a collaborative archival environment. AlterNative: An International Journal of Indigenous Peoples 12(1): 32-42.
Gillreath-Brown, A. & Peres, T.M. (2017) Identifying Turtle Shell Rattles in the Archaeological Record of the Southeastern United States. (2017). Ethnobiology Letters, 8(1), 109–114. Open access publication available here.
Goff, S., Chapoose, B., Cook, E., Voirol, S., Benden, D. M., & Knoll, M. K. (2019). Collaborating Beyond Collections: Engaging Tribes in Museum Exhibits. Advances in Archaeological Practice, 7(3), 224–233.
Goldberg, S. (2015). Kennewick Man and the Meaning of Life. University of Chicago Legal Forum 2006(1): 275-287.
Gould, D. R. (2017). NAGPRA, CUI and institutional will. In The Routledge Companion to Cultural Property (pp. 134–151). Routledge.
Harkulich, C.M. (2018). Gregg Deal’s White Indian (2016): The Decolonial Possibilities of Museum Performance. Contemporaneity: Historical Presence in Visual Culture, 7(0), 45–52.
Hua, J. & Ray, K. (2016). The lives of things: Native objects, human rights, and non-Indian relationality. Prose Studies 38(1): 12-33.
Huang, J. (2015). Protecting Non-indigenous Human Remains under Cultural Heritage Law. Chinese Journal of International Law 14(4): 709-733.
Kakaliouras, A. M. (2014). When Remains are “Lost”: Thoughts on Collections, Repatriation, and Research in American Physical Anthropology. Curator: The Museum Journal, 57: 213–223. doi: 10.1111/cura.12062
Kan, S. & Henrikson, S. (2015). Sharing Our Knowledge: The Tlingit and Their Coastal Neighbors. Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press. Available online
Kim, J. and D. Steadman. (2014). A Review of Codes of Ethics in the United States and Ethical Dilemmas Surrounding the Native American Graves Protection and Repatriation Act (NAGPRA). Korean Journal of Physical Anthropology, 27(2):47-63. Open access publication available here
Kryder-Reid, E., Foutz, J. W., Wood, E., & Zimmerman, L. J. (2018). “‘I just don’t ever use that word’: investigating stakeholders’ understanding of heritage”. International Journal of Heritage Studies, 24(7), 743–763.
La Follette, L. (2017). Looted Antiquities, Art Museums and Restitution in the United States since 1970. Journal of Contemporary History, 52(3), 669–687.
Lawrence, D., & Lawrence, J. (2017). Returning the Plundered Skulls: An Interview With Chip Colwell. Overland Journal (07381093), 35(4), 150–159.
Madeson, F. (2018). The Excruciating Legacy of NAGPRA. Indian Country Today. Publication available here.
Martinez, D. R., Teeter, W. G. and Kennedy-Richardson, K. (2014). Returning the tataayiyam honuuka' (Ancestors) to the Correct Home: The Importance of Background Investigations for NAGPRA Claims. Curator: The Museum Journal, 57: 199–211.
Meltzer, D. (2015). Kennewick Man: coming to closure. Antiquity 89: 1485-1493.
Messenger, P.M. & Bender, S.J. (2019). History and Approaches to Heritage Studies. University Press of Florida.
Mickleburgh, H. L. (2015). Skeletons in the closet: Future avenues for the curation of archaeological human skeletal remains in the Dutch Caribbean and the rest of the region. C. Hofman and J. Haviser (ed.) Managing Our Past Into the Future: archaeological heritage management in the Dutch Caribbean: 113-130. Leiden: Sidestone Press.
Murray, C. E. (2019). Bodies, artifacts, and ghosts: NAGPRA and the unsettling of settler colonialism. In The Varieties of Historical Experience. Routledge.
Nash, S.E. (2021). How Museums Can Do More Than Just Repatriate Objects. Sapiens. https://www.sapiens.org/column/curiosities/propatriation-NAGPRA/
Nichols, C. A. (2014). Lost in Museums: The Ethical Dimensions of Historical Practices of Anthropological Specimen Exchange. Curator: The Museum Journal, 57(2): 225-236.
Obermeyer, B. (2016). “We call it put him away”: Contemporary Delaware burial practices and NAGPRA. North American Archaeologist 37(2): 112-135.
Odegaard, N., Benden, D. M., & Knoll, M. K. (2019). Pesticide Contamination and Archaeological Collections: Contextual Information for Preparing a Pesticide History. Advances in Archaeological Practice, 7(3), 292–301.
Orona, B., & Esquivido, V. (2020). Continued Disembodiment : NAGPRA, CAL NAGPRA, and Recognition. Humboldt Journal of Social Relations, 42, 50–68.
Owsley, D. W., & Jantz, R. L. (ed.) (2014). Kennewick Man: The Scientific Investigation of an Ancient American Skeleton. Texas A&M University Press.
Pappas, A. M., Buchanan, S. A., Lowry, J., & Sutherland, T. (2021). Native American and land-grant collection praxis since NAGPRA. Education for Information, 37(1), 69–95.
Powless, P., & Freiwald, C. (2019). The Challenges of Dealing with Human Remains in Cultural Resource Management. Advances in Archaeological Practice, 7(1), 55–59.
Poremski, K. (2015). Voicing the Bones: Heid Erdrich’s Poetry and the Discourse of NAGPRA. Studies in American Indian Literature 27(1):1-32.
Rasmussen, M. et al. (2015). The ancestry and affiliations of Kennewick Man. Nature 523: 455–458. doi:10.1038/nature14625
REDix, E. M. (2017). “Our Hope and Our Protection”: Misko-biiwaabik (Copper) and Tribal Sovereignty in Michigan. American Indian Quarterly, 41(3), 224–249.
Redman, S.J. (2016) Bone Rooms: from scientific racism to human prehistory in museums. Harvard University Press.
Rogers, A. (2019). Owning Geronimo but Not Elmer McCurdy: The Unique Property Status of Native American Remains. Boston College Law Review, 60(8), 2347–2408.
Sciullo Nick J. (2020). Accumulation, Cultural Capital, and the Native American Graves Protection and Repatriation Act. Ab-Original: Journal of Indigenous Studies and First Nations and First Peoples’ Cultures, 3(2), 192–211.
Shannon, J. (2019). Posterity Is Now. Museum Anthropology, 42(1), 5–13.
Steeves, P. (2015). Academia, Archaeology, CRM, and Tribal Historic Preservation. Archaeologies 11(1): 121-141.
Stutz, L. N. (2016). Claims to the Past. A Critical View of the Arguments Driving Repatriation of Cultural Heritage and Their Role in Contemporary Identity Politics. Journal of Intervention and Statebuilding 7(2): 170-195.
Thomas, J-L., Buchanan, M., Wilson, C., & Crane, A. (2017). Violence and Trophy Taking: a case study of head and neck trauma in two individuals from the Gant site (3MS11). International Journal of Osteology. doi:10.1002/oa.2474.
Weiss, E., & Springer, J. W. (2020). Repatriation and erasing the past. Gainesville: University of Florida Press.
Zimmerman, L. J., & Branam, K. M. (2014). Collaborating with Stakeholders. J. Balme and A. Paterson (ed.) Archaeology in Practice: A Student Guide to Archaeological Analyses, 1-25. Malden, MA: John Wiley & Sons, Inc.
