The Native American Graves Protection and Repatriation Act
(NAGPRA) of 1990 provides a legal framework within which Native
Americans can seek the repatriation of human remains and certain
categories of cultural objects--including "sacred objects"--from
federally funded institutions. Although the repatriation movement
among Native Americans has heretofore received scholarly attention
specifically focused on this act, Sacred Claims is the first book
to analyze the ways in which religious discourse is used to
articulate repatriation claims. Greg Johnson takes this act as one
instance in a larger context wherein native peoples around the
globe must engage legal arenas in order to preserve their
heritage.
Methodologically, Sacred Claims is based on a close reading of
government documents concerning the law and participant observation
in a variety of NAGPRA-related events and provides the background
and legislative history of the law, the life history of the act's
axial term cultural affiliation (the most delicate and least
understood aspect of NAGPRA), and several case studies of highly
visible and contentious Hawaiian repatriation disputes. Johnson
then moves beyond the strictly legal context to analyze NAGPRA
discourse in the public realm. He concludes by way of a theoretical
treatment of the foregoing issues, arguing that religious language
was the chief means by which native representatives ultimately
persuaded non-native audiences of the applicability of widely-held
human rights principles to their cultural remains. Theorizing modes
of cultural vitality in the repatriation context, Johnson argues
that living tradition is not found in the objects themselves but is
instead located in struggles over them.
With the law on the brink of receiving crucial tests, and
repatriation issues making daily headlines in Native American and
Hawaiian news, Sacred Claims is a timely and necessary examination
of these issues.
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