“NAGPRA provides a process for museums and Federal agencies to return certain Native American cultural items -- human remains, funerary objects, sacred objects, or objects of cultural patrimony -- to lineal descendants, and culturally affiliated Indian tribes and Native Hawaiian organizations. NAGPRA includes provisions for unclaimed and culturally unidentifiable Native American cultural items, intentional and inadvertent discovery of Native American cultural items on Federal and tribal lands, and penalties for noncompliance and illegal trafficking. In addition, NAGPRA authorizes Federal grants to Indian tribes, Native Hawaiian organizations, and museums to assist with the documentation and repatriation of Native American cultural items, and establishes the Native American Graves Protection and R

However it hasn’t always been about money and art for everyone digging up Indian remains. For in the past, and especially today, there have been thousands of archeologists, some of which are Native Americans as well, who devoted their lives to the study of humans, their remains, cultures, and their passage to the new world. For it is these people who make it possible to establish the race of the remains (in which to affiliate to a tribe). The age, sex, diet, culture, and many more things we would have never been able to do without. They have sacrificed, by choice, money, health (sickness and wounds due to harsh environments), and most of all time (months, years, and for many lives). It is these people that have the right to fight for such remains as the Kennewick Man. This is a skeleton that could change our world forever, and it is here that it becomes personally opinionated.

Up until recently the law had never been challenged. However, the Kennewick Man a 9300 year old skeleton found along the Columbia River in Washington (White pg.6), changed NAGPRA forever. Because of this amazing find, laws are changing and so are the ways we now look at the history of the arrival of humans to the “new world” (America). This skeleton is still being fought for by scientists and the Umatilla Tribe (which is trying to claim it). The main reason it is so important to

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