Well said! I would echo Ms. Klien's advice to contact the National NAGPRA
office ( see http://www.cr.nps.gov/nagpra/) with questions regarding
compliance. Situations like these are quite common, and the staff of
National NAGPRA have always provided helpful and expert assistance to find
solutions to even the most challenging questions!
Cheers,
Bridget M. Ambler
NAGPRA Liaison
Colorado Historical Society
1300 Broadway
Denver, CO 80203
phone: 303-866-4531
fax: 303-866-5739
e-mail: [log in to unmask]
Janice Klein wrote:
State law varies, which is why the original questioner needs to contact her
state authorities (or the state museum). However, according to NAGPRA it
is not illegal for individuals to own human remains that they found on
their own property or were given by someone who rightfully owned them. (It
is illegal to remove remains from federally or Indian owned land). It is
also legal to donate said remains (and associated funerary objects) to a
museum. The museum must then report the acquisition of these remains (in
the form of the "standard" NAGPRA inventory) to the National Park Service
and to the appropriate tribes. Right now there is no deadline for
reporting acquisitions subsequent to the inventories required by 1995; a
Reliable Informant tells me that this part of the NAGPRA regs will come out
in October and set a 2 year deadline on the reporting of new human remains.
The biggest issue in this whole thing is not any of the possession issues
of the second part of the law, but the trafficking prohibition in the first
part of the law. If the donor attempts to take a tax deduction on the
donation of the human remains to the museum, s/he could be considered to be
profiting from the exchange of the remains (which is illegal under NAGPRA).
The donor can take a deduction on the value of the pot (there is no
prohibition on funerary objects). It might be a Good Thing to get an
appraisal on the value of the pot with remains and the pot without remains
to show that the donor did, in fact, take the lower deduction.
Hope this helps. BTW you should never be afraid to contact the NAGPRA
office at the National Park Service. They are actually quite helpful and
tend to want to help museums do the Right Thing, rather than wait for them
to screw up and prosecute them.
janice
Janice Klein
Director, Mitchell Museum of the American Indian
[log in to unmask]
www.mitchellmuseum.org
Original Message:
-----------------
From: Maradragon [log in to unmask]
Date: Mon, 2 May 2005 00:46:03 -0400
To: [log in to unmask]
Subject: Re: Native American bowl and bones
Tread lightly here. Remember, she didn't have to tell anyone what she had.
I've worked for several archival institutions. Unfortunately, the liability
for human remains often falls, or is percieved to fall on, the person who
has them in posession, not the person who dug them up. The result is that
even professional institutions will lie about what they have or have
stumbled across to avoid trouble.
If authroities show up at her door because this lady spoke up, or worse, she
ends up with a lawsuit from the nearest tribe on her hands, do you think
anyone in her family, town, or the "artifact collecting" circles they
frequent is ever going to step up and do the right thing again?
Mara K.
> No one is permitted to "own" human remains unless specifically licensed by
> the state/fed government. The license will only be granted to
repositories,
> such as archaeological labs. The owner of the bowl/remains has already
> broken the law by having the human remains in her possession. At my
museum,
> we would accept the donation and then turn the remains over to a license
> repository. I doubt very much if this woman will take the time to contact
> other people to determine how to dispose of the items, especially since
she
> had wanted to throw them away. I urge the museum to contact the
> appropriate government repository to determine how the matter should be
> resolved.
>
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