NAGPRA at the Peabody: Past, Present, and Future

Background

Progress

Leadership

Impact

In the 1970s and 1980s, museum repatriation became a national and international conversation. In these years, the Peabody began to grapple with how repatriation might work legally, ethically, and in practice; in several instances the Peabody worked with Tribal Nations  and international descendant communities to return ancestors and cultural items. In the United States, Native American civil rights and religious freedom policymaking and activism resulted in the passage of the Native American Graves Protection and Repatriation Act (NAGPRA).

When NAGPRA passed in 1990, it required the Peabody and other museums, in consultation with Tribal Nations, to identify and return Native American human remains, funerary objects, objects of cultural patrimony, and sacred objects to federally recognized Indian Tribes and Native Hawaiian organizations. At that time the Peabody cared for one of the largest collections subject to NAGPRA with ancestors and cultural heritage items from nearly every U.S. state.

The statute, along with subsequent administrative regulations, sets forth a detailed administrative process for museums, universities, and other institutions holding Native American collections to produce summaries of potential sacred objects and objects of cultural patrimony and inventories of ancestors and funerary belongings and consult with Tribal Nations. The museum completed its summary requirement for cultural items in 1993. However, due to the number of ancestral remains and funerary belongings in the collection, the Peabody together with other museums, was granted an extension for the inventory process; these were completed in 2001. During the inventory process, the Peabody was in communication with all 574 federally recognized Indian Tribes and Native Hawaiian Organizations, as well as many state-recognized tribes and other Native groups. The Inventories can be found on the National NAGPRA website using their search tool and looking for “Harvard University, Peabody Museum of Archaeology and Ethnology” under “Museum or Federal Agency.”  

After inventories and summaries were sent, the museum entered an ongoing consultation process with Tribes which led to the publication of Federal Register Notices and the transfer of ancestors and cultural items to Tribal Nations. This process continues today. Often a legal repatriation is followed by a physical repatriation, but sometimes Tribes request that the museum continue to act as steward for a variety of reasons and the Peabody continues to care for ancestors and cultural items according to the wishes of Tribes until they can be physically repatriated.

In the early 2010s, following expanded regulations issued by the Department of the Interior in 2010, the museum received requests for disposition of ancestors under NAGPRA, resulting in the disposition of over 1,100 "culturally unidentifiable" ancestors. Regrettably, the museum retained the associated funerary belongings of these ancestors since their return was not required by the new regulations. This prompted protest from across Indian Country, and more immediately, caused additional unresolved grief for the Tribal Nations going through the process of reburying ancestors. 

In January 2021, the Peabody reversed this policy, allowing for the return of associated funerary belongings with “culturally unidentifiable" ancestors. Peabody leadership respectfully contacted Tribal Nations who had requested these funerary belongings but were declined. Consultation resumed with the impacted Tribes and the associated funerary belongings  have been returned. The museum apologizes for those refusals and regrets the negative impacts of its former policy. We are now committed to conducting repatriations through NAGPRA in ways that help heal the wounds of historical trauma and with a deeper understanding of our responsibility to care for Indigenous communities past, present, and future.

As of September 1, 2023, the museum has published more than 200 Federal Register Notices and returned 4,348 ancestors, close to 10,000 funerary belongings, and more than 100 sacred objects and objects of cultural patrimony to more than 250 Tribal Nations. More details on Harvard’s implementation of NAGPRA can be found in a Memorandum to Senators and Members of the Committee on Indian Affairs sent on June 20, 2023 by Peabody leadership in response to a letter to Harvard President Lawrence Bacow from the Committee.

These data visualizations represent progress on the Museum’s implementation of NAGPRA, particularly the repatriation of ancestors to Tribes to enable their return home. 

In 1995 the Harvard Corporation delegated decision-making for NAGPRA to the Peabody Museum Director. 

In 2019, Dr. Claudine Gay, then the Edgerley Family Dean of Harvard Faculty of Arts and Sciences, appointed Jane Pickering to become the William and Muriel Seabury Howells Director of the Peabody. In 2020, Dean Gay and Director Pickering created the NAGPRA Advisory Committee, chaired by Professor Philip Deloria. When it formed, the NAGPRA Advisory Committee immediately prioritized the issue of returning associated funerary belongings with “culturally unidentifiable” ancestors leading to the revised policy mentioned above.

In January 2021 Director Pickering made a formal apology for the practices that led to the Peabody’s large collection of Native American ancestors and funerary belongings, and pledged to address the institution’s history by prioritizing the urgent work of repatriation. This was followed by a revision to our research access policy beginning in October 2021, which states that the museum will no longer authorize research on collections subject to NAGPRA without permission from authorized Tribal representatives.

In Fall 2022, at the same time as Harvard’s Steering Committee on Human Remains’ report was issued, the Peabody announced a NAGPRA Disposition Project. This project, using definitions from the 2010 regulations, aimed to complete disposition of ancestors and their associated funerary belongings within the next three years. The work begun by this project will now continue under the new NAGPRA regulations effective January 2024. Having more than doubled NAGPRA staffing under the initial project, the university now has one of the largest museum staff dedicated to NAGPRA in the country. 

At the Peabody, the impact of NAGPRA has included hiring staff members focused on NAGPRA implementation, the formation of a NAGPRA department, and dedicating collections staff to assist with NAGPRA collections research and consultations. It has also changed our policies and practices of collections care. The consultation process not only leads to our increased knowledge about the collections in our care but also a greater understanding of cultural care considerations recognizing these cultural items also as beings and relatives, rather than simply collections or objects. As a part of NAGPRA consultations, the Peabody works with Tribal Nations on traditional care, handling, and other requests pertaining to culturally sensitive collections.

As we continue our work of implementing NAGPRA policy at the Peabody, we deepen our understanding of the ethical and moral imperative it represents. This ethos has also helped us to recognize the spirit of repatriation more broadly. In 2022, we implemented a framework for domestic and international returns of cultural items beyond NAGPRA. Additionally, the 2022 Report by the Steering Committee on Human Remains in University Museum Collections includes recommendations for the return and repatriation of ancestral remains to communities around the world.

Complying with NAGPRA has fundamentally changed the structure, practices, and values of the Peabody Museum. The passage of NAGPRA and the international Indigenous repatriation movement cannot be overstated in their impact on museums today.