by ESTER HARRISON
This essay is part of a slow research series, What is Research? Learn about the series and click here to add your voice to the conversation.
In 2018, a committee of staff members at the Harry Ransom Center began the process of updating the Center’s deaccession policy and procedures: a standard document that most museums and archives have in their collection management protocols. One of the laws listed in the deaccession policy is The Native American Graves Protection and Repatriation Act (NAGPRA), which directs federal agencies and institutions that received federal funding to deaccession Native American cultural items and return them to descendants of affiliated Indian tribes per statutes of this Federal Act. The deaccession committee’s project to review Native American collections at the Ransom Center was further inspired following the 2019 Flair Symposium Ethical Challenges in Cultural Stewardship, which included discussions about NAGPRA in some of the panel presentations. [Read more…] about The Ransom Center and NAGPRA: A team effort in research