Secretary of the Interior Manuel Lujan today announced the appointment of six private citizens as members of the Native American Graves Protection and Repatriation Review Committee "The committee faces a challenging set or tasks," Lujan said in making the appointments. "Among their duties, they must advise me on regulations needed to implement the Native American Graves Protection and Repatriation Act of 1990, and they will assist in the resolution of disputes caused by its requirements. This will require careful reading of the law and a willingness to listen to each side of an issue."
The appointees are:
Ms. Rachel Craig, an Inupiaq Native from Kotzebue, Alaska, who has been active throughout the state in efforts to save Native cultural traditions;
Dan Monroe, President of the Oregon Art Institute, Portland, who played a leading role for the American Association of Museums in development of the 1990 legislation;
Ms. Tessie Naranjo, a Santa Clara Pueblo from Espanola, New Mexico, active in cultural preservation at Santa Clara Pueblo and the collections manager for Pojoaque Pueblo;
Dr. Martin Sullivan, Director of the Heard Museum in Phoenix, Arizona, who has been active at the national and regional levels in repatriation issues;
William Tallbull, of Lame Deer, Montana, tribal historian for the Northern Cheyenne;
Dr. Philip Walker, a physical anthropologist in the Department of Anthropology, University of California at Santa Barbara, who also serves as chair of the Task Force on Repatriation of the Society for American Archaeology.
The committee will monitor, review and assist in implementation of certain requirements of the 1990 law. The statute requires that federal agencies and museums that receive federal funds inventory Native American remains and funerary objects in their collections and offer to repatriate those items to lineal descendants or culturally affiliated tribes or Native Hawaiian organizations. The law also provides additional protection for Native American graves on federal or tribal lands, and it includes a means for repatriating human remains or funerary objects recovered from such lands since November 1990. Appointees to the committee were selected from nominations the Secretary received from tribes, Native Hawaiian organizations, traditional religious leaders, and national museum and scientific organizations.
