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Codified in Western scholarship, like Charles Jones' 1873 book Antiquities of the
Southern Indians, Particularly of the Georgia Tribes, the prevailing Euro-centric view
concerning the connections across time between Mound Builders and members of Native
American nations dominated how archaeologists and anthropologists interacted with ancient
Native American sites well into the late twentieth century.4 Though these theories shaped the
academic discussion of prehistoric sites, American Indian groups continued to keep and recount
their own traditional views. For decades the oral traditions and histories of Native peoples were
dismissed as mythology or folklore. Though Native Americans have always resisted American
imperialism at every turn, during the 1960s and 1970s Native activism slowly gained federal
attention. By the 1980s increasingly louder voices were calling for the return of Native American
remains and cultural objects, which for over a century had been subject to theft and grave-
robbing at the behest of anthropological progress. These renewed calls for social justice took
advantage of the American legislative system using lawsuits against individual states and the
U.S. government, along with a strong lobbying presence in Congress, in attempts to effect
significant change.5

In 1990 legislators passed House Resolution 5237, the bill that became the Native
American Graves Protection and Repatriation Act.6 This bill intended to give Native American
nations a means through which to demand the return of human remains, funerary objects, and
artifacts. NAGPRA legislation required the institutions that held these items to complete a formal
inventory of their collections and in turn notify any federally recognized Native American

4 Frank Schnell, ed, Antiquities of the Southern Indians, Particularly of the Georgia Tribes. (Tuscaloosa: University
Alabama Press, 1999) iix-x.
5 Jerome C. Rose, Thomas J. Green, and Victoria D. Green.. "Nagpra is Forever: Osteology and the Repatriation of
Skeletons." Annual Review Of Anthropology no. 81, 1996, 81-82.
6 Clayton W. Dumont Jr. "Contesting scientists' narrations of NAGPRA's legislative history: rule 10.11 and the
recovery of 'Culturally Unidentifiable' ancestors." Wicazo Sa Review no. 1: 5, 2011, 6-7.

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