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Politics of Repatriation: Formalizing Indigenous Repatriation Policy

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  20 December 2018

Ashleigh Breske
Ashleigh Breske*
Affiliation:
Hollins University, Roanoke, VA, United States; Email: aslilly@vt.edu
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Abstract:

This article will show how institutions and cultural values mediate changes in the governance of repatriation policy. By examining ownership paradigms and institutional power structures and analyzing the changing discourses before and after the passage of the Native American Graves Protection and Repatriation Act, it is possible to understand the ramifications of formalizing repatriation. The current binary of cultural property nationalism/cultural property internationalism in relation to Indigenous ownership claims does not represent the full scope of the conflict for Indigenous people within the Western legal interpretations of property ownership. Inclusion of a cultural property indigenism component into the established cultural property nationalism/internationalism ownership paradigm will more accurately represent Indigenous concerns for cultural property. Looking at the rules, norms, and strategies of national and international laws and museum institutions, this article will argue that there are consequences to repatriation claims that go beyond the possession of property and that a formalized process (or semi-formalized approach) can aid in addressing Indigenous rights.

Keywords

Indigenous rightsrepatriationcultural property indigenismNAGPRAownership claimssettler colonialism
Type
Article
Information
International Journal of Cultural Property , Volume 25 , Issue 3 , August 2018 , pp. 347 - 373
Copyright
Copyright © International Cultural Property Society 2018 

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