Opinion.Tucked between the fourth and the fifth holes on the fairway of the Hiawatha Golf Course in Canton, South Dakota, lies a fenced-in Indian cemetery. There are no markers for the 126 known graves found there. The course’s golfers would probably never suspect why the area is fenced off unless they entered it and read a placard facing opposite the fairway listing the names of – not all but some – of 121 Native people buried there. The known names. 

After a summer of returning nine ancestors who died while attending boarding school in Carlisle, Pennsylvania, the Rosebud Sioux Tribe is zeroing in on another location for return: The cemetery of a former government-run insane asylum in Canton, a town of about 3,000 people in southeast South Dakota.

The University of Alabama Museums have skeletons in their closets—literally.

Over the last 100 years, federal Indian law and policy has come a long way from U.S. funded policies meant to destroy the structures of autonomy, governance, and security of Native Nations to forcibly assimilate Native peoples into its melting pot. These federal actions have been declared by U.S. leaders as acts of genocide, meant to stamp out and eradicate Native Nations altogether. 

Under legislation passed by Congress in 1990 — the Native American Graves Protection and Repatriation Act (NAGPRA) — certain cultural artifacts, funerary objects, and human remains held by museums and federal agencies are subject to a process of federal review and return to their respective tribal nations.

WASHINGTON — The Department of the Interior announced on July 15 that it will begin consultations with tribal and Native Hawaiian community leaders about an overhaul of regulations that implement the Native American Graves Protection and Repatriation Act (NAGPRA). The draft regulations will reshape the processes by which federal agencies and museums return Native American human remains and cultural objects to descendents and Native communities. 

CARLISLE, Pa. — With the cedar boxes of nine of her ancestors’ remains behind her, 21-year-old Asia Black Bull addressed a crowd of roughly 60 visitors at the Carlisle Barracks’ transfer ceremony Wednesday morning.

The Supreme Court announced last Monday that it would take up a case involving the U.S.-Mexico border wall.  There’s been no shortage of lawsuits filed against the Trump administration to try stopping construction of the wall. Most of the lawsuits are focused on money, specifically the administration’s use of Pentagon funding to build the wall along the country’s southern border.  

WEST POINT, Calif. — While restoring devastated rural economies and ecological disasters on ancestral Indigenous lands through stewardship, California tribes could have a shot at federal land repatriation.

SACRAMENTO, Calif. — With Gov. Gavin Newsom’s signature, federally and non-federally recognized California tribes would be one step closer to recovering ancestor remains and artifacts from state-funded institutions.

WASHINGTON — Thirty years ago this November, the Native American Graves Protection and Repatriation Act (NAGPRA) was passed by Congress. NAGPRA provides a legal process of repatriation for tribal ancestors’ remains, burial belongings, sacred objects and cultural patrimony that have been looted, stolen and taken in unconscionable ways from tribal nations.

SACRAMENTO, Calif. — A new bill in California, titled AB-275 Native American cultural preservation (2019-2020), would enable tribes to reclaim human remains and funerary objects, and could potentially serve as a gateway legislation for tribes and tribal members to manage their own ancestors’ legacies. 

RIVERTON, Wyo. — The Northern Arapaho Tribe will hold a celebration on Saturday, February 1st at the Great Plains Hall at Arapahoe to welcome home the headdress of Chief Black Coal,according to the Tribe’s Facebook page.