A Collaborative Model for Repatriation

In October, the nine federally recognized Native nations in Oregon, in collaboration with Oregon State University, announced the opening of what they believe is a first-of-its-kind facility dedicated to the repatriation of ancestral remains.

“It was a very emotional day — it was very spiritually heavy — but it was also a really freeing day, because it just felt right,” Dawn Marie Alapisco, director of the Native American Graves Protection and Repatriation Act (NAGPRA) Office at OSU, told Cronogomet + Report for America. “It felt like we were doing the right thing. We were doing what we should be doing to take care of the ancestors until they can go home.”

The newly constructed 2,000-square-foot OSU-NAGPRA Facility consists of two off-campus buildings with administrative offices where Native nations and OSU will engage in and carry out consultation, in addition to storing records and housing ancestral remains that are still under the university’s care, in accordance with NAGPRA.

NAGPRA is the 1990 federal law that “governs the return of Native American remains, funerary objects, sacred objects, and objects of cultural patrimony.”

Native nations and OSU partners hope the facility can serve as a model for others to follow.

“To my knowledge, it hasn’t been done by any other educational institution in the United States, which hopefully will set precedents for the other institutions to do the right thing,” said Wilson Wewa, Northern Paiute and Palouse, a tribal leader and elder from the Confederated Tribes of Warm Springs. “For decades, if not over a century, many universities and museums have treated the remains of our ancestors as artifacts, as the unclaimed or unknown people, and by doing so, showing a big disrespect to our tribes.”

Alapisco wanted to do it differently. She emphasized the importance of having tribes involved every step of the way to make sure their voices were heard and listened to.

“We didn’t have a template,” Alapisco said. “We were really going off of, ‘How do we do this in the right way?’ And that’s why consultation was such a big part of all of the planning. But, at this point, it’s time to let the voices of everyone who’s put the time and effort in to really shine through.”

Tribal representatives from seven of the nine federally recognized tribes joined Indigenous OSU students and faculty on Oct. 11 to share songs and prayers as they worked together to transfer ancestors from their previous housing facility to the newly developed space where they will remain until making the final trip to be returned home.

“This is history in the making,” Alapisco added. “This is a win for the tribes of Oregon. This is a win for the tribes of the United States. This is a win in a space that doesn’t have many big wins.”

Native American Graves Protection and Repatriation Act

A former geriatric nurse, Alapisco returned to school to pursue an advanced nursing degree but unexpectedly discovered a passion for anthropology. She began working with OSU’s NAGPRA program as an undergraduate student in 2008 and continued to do so into her graduate studies. The degree shift gave her an inside perspective on NAGPRA.

Enacted in 1990, the Native American Graves Protection and Repatriation Act (NAGPRA) mandates that federal agencies and museums receiving federal funds must return certain Native American cultural items — such as human remains, funerary objects, sacred objects and items of cultural patrimony — to the relevant lineal descendants, tribes, Alaska Native Corporations and Native Hawaiian organizations.

“This is one of the honors of my life,” Alapisco, who is Indigenous but has no U.S.-based tribal affiliation, said. “This isn’t just a job for me — this is literally a calling I have. I’ve put the time and effort in to get the education, to understand the academic side of what it is that I do. And my job now is to take the Indigenous side of that and make the academic side conform and put the Indigenous needs first, put the needs of the tribes first.”

“The ancestors called me here to do this work,” she added. “They called me here specifically to OSU.”

Alapisco said one of her “greatest wins at OSU” is making people realize that “NAGPRA doesn’t go away.”

“NAGPRA is here,” Alapisco said. “NAGPRA is a process that we will be grappling with for the rest of the history of this institution, because, inevitably, it informs everything. If we can’t be trusted to take care of ancestors, how can we be trusted to take care of children? And so that’s really what it comes down to. I’m just a mama. I’m just a mama here with a bunch of kids, and I want my kids to be safe.”

Taking care of the ancestors

Wewa was one of the elders and tribal representatives in attendance on Oct. 11 to help ensure that the transporting process was done appropriately. Wewa, whose traditional name is Weyawewa, which translates to Many Robes, has served on the tribal council of the Confederated Tribes of Warm Springs for nearly a decade.

“It’s always our hope that good things will take root, and if they do take root, sometimes better things happen,” Wewa said. “What Oregon State University has done by acknowledging that they have ancestors stored in boxes here, that they have taken the initiative in a respectful way to build a facility to house them until they can be repatriated back, hopefully that takes root.”

Wewa hopes that, within the near future, the facilities will be empty “because the institutions that choose to work with tribes acknowledge those remains and those cultural items as having a home with their people, within their ancestral lands where they were taken from.”

“Once they go back to their original home, those facilities would end up empty because the right thing was done, and there would no longer be a need for them,” Wewa said, adding that the remains and cultural items “are important to their living descendants today.”

Even if the facility is empty someday, Alapisco points out that NAGPRA will always be needed.

“It’s going to exist in the future of archeology because there are going to be times where cultural items are excavated, where tribes are like, ‘Wait, wait, wait, you found what? That’s an item of cultural patrimony, or that’s a sacred item,’ or what have you,” Alapisco said. “Those situations are still going to exist.”

While those scenarios are inevitable, Alapisco hopes that institutions will take a page from OSU’s book and build meaningful relationships with tribes and Native peoples so that it will be a smoother transition and more streamlined system to return ancestors and artifacts home.

Wewa said it’s imperative for tribes to be involved with every step of the process because taking care of ancestors and loved ones who have walked on is rooted in Native identity and culture.

“We pride ourselves in our identity, and a part of that identity is imbued in the remains of our ancestors, the ones we took care of [on Oct. 11],” Wewa said. “That’s why it’s important to us to be a part of things like this, because we’re doing the right thing.”

As attendees prepared to depart, OSU students wanted to make sure, as a way to say thank you, that everyone left with a gift, including the ancestors. They walked around with a clear box filled with dentalium shell necklaces, and as they approached each person and thanked them for being there, they placed the necklaces on people’s necks, the orange and black crystals sparkling in contrast to the thin white dentalium shells.

“Those strands that were passed out at that event were representative of our commitment to ensure that all ancestors go home with grave goods and that we’re doing the best that we can to get them home appropriately,” Alapisco said. “We can’t fix the past — we can’t change the past — but we can move forward with intentionality.”

‘Keep our songs alive for them’

Toby Patrick, council member of the Confederated Tribes of the Umatilla Indian Reservation, said he was thankful for Alapisco and OSU for making sure the tribes were involved because it allowed them the opportunity to follow traditional and cultural protocol by singing songs and praying for the ancestors the way it has always been done.

“There’s a lot of places, a lot of institutions and universities, that are just holding on to artifacts that belong to Native Americans that just need to be returned and taken care of,” Patrick said. “They’ve been disturbed, and we today have to do the best we can to put them back, because we don’t have that medicine that they had when they were put away first.”

Patrick and those in attendance on Oct. 11 shared songs and prayers that have been around since time immemorial.

“The songs that we sing, they still carry that same meaning, because they come from those same times,” Patrick said. “And those bones, those artifacts, know those songs, and we’re giving them an opportunity to make it back to the Creator.”

He said that being able to sing those same songs and to understand what needed to be done during the transfer from the old facility to the new facility go hand in hand.

“If I was to forget my songs, I wouldn’t be able to take care of those artifacts and other institutions wouldn’t be able to understand what we’re asking for,” Patrick said. “So we as Indian people here today have to keep our songs alive for them.”