Late last month, the Wyoming Association of Professional Archaeologists (WAPA) filed a complaint against Douglas J. Burgum, the US Secretary of the Interior, and the Bureau of Land Management in the US District Court for the District of Wyoming.
In the case, filed July 24, WAPA, a Wyoming-based nonprofit representing field archaeologists, academic researchers, and museum professionals, calls for the court to “halt ongoing unlawful transfers of, and denial of research access to, archaeological resources owned, administered, curated, or regulated by the United States” under the 1990 statute known as the Native American Graves Protection and Repatriation Act (NAGPRA).
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NAGPRA requires museums and federal agencies to repatriate Native American human remains, funerary and sacred objects, and objects of cultural patrimony to descendants and tribal communities. In January 2024, the Department of the Interior made major updates to the law to speed up repatriation after reports found that fewer than half of human remains reported under the law had been returned. The new regulations were designed to close loopholes, strengthen tribal authority, and give institutions five years to inventory and prepare all ancestors and related funerary objects for repatriation.
In January 2023, ProPublica published an investigation into which institutions held the most items under NAGPRA jurisdiction; one of the most cited mechanisms used to slow the repatriation process was the labeling of certain items as “culturally unidentifiable.” The 2024 regulations were meant to close that loophole.
The new regulations have been controversial with some institutions and their leaders, though the National Park Service has awarded millions in grants to aid the repatriation process, and major museums, like the Metropolitan Museum of Art, have continued to make returns under the law.
Notably, WAPA’s complaint does not target the 2024 rule alone. It challenges the entire regulatory scheme Interior developed “between 2010 and 2024,” arguing that Interior rewrote NAGPRA in a way that “exceeds the boundaries of the 1990 statute.” The suit is brought under the Administrative Procedure Act (APA), and WAPA asks the court to declare the challenged regulations invalid and stop the government from relying on them, arguing they are beyond the authority Congress delegated to the agency.
WAPA argues that Interior Department’s rewriting of NAGPRA rules “injures” the association, its members, and the public by “interfering with their ability to investigate, study, document, preserve, and curate the archaeological record.” The complaint specifically challenges how the new regulations loosen the rules for establishing cultural affiliation; expand the statutory definitions of “cultural item,” “funerary object,” “sacred object,” and “object of cultural patrimony”; and require agencies and museums to defer to a broad category of “Native American traditional knowledge” in a way that, WAPA says, sidesteps the burden of proof the statute requires.
The complaint is careful to note that WAPA does not oppose NAGPRA or “lawful repatriation,” nor does it ask the court to weigh in on whether any tribe has cultural, spiritual, or moral interests in particular remains or objects. It also does not seek to reverse any transfer already completed but to block six specific pending transfers.
Those transfers are cited in the complaint as concrete examples of the alleged overreach. BLM Wyoming has claimed that entire archaeological collections from the Shute Creek, Wardell Bison Trap, Upper Muddy Creek Village, and Studhorse Butte sites, housed at the University of Wyoming Archaeological Repository, are associated funerary objects subject to repatriation. BLM Colorado has made a similar claim about the collection from the Eagle Rock Shelter site, housed at the Fort Bridger State Historic Site curation facility in Uinta County, Wyoming.
WAPA contends that those collections consist largely of everyday excavation material, like stone tool-making debris, soil samples, rocks, animal bones, and campsite refuse, that shouldn’t be reclassified as a NAGPRA “cultural item” just because it turned up at a site that also contained human remains.
“Since the 2024 regulations took effect, thousands (likely millions) more archaeological resources have been unlawfully divested (and continue to be divested) from archaeological repositories as a result of Interior’s ultra vires redefinition of NAGPRA’s key terms, expanding the scope of material subject to transfer far beyond the scope of that authorized by Congress,” the complaint says.
WAPA and the University of Wyoming did not respond to requests for comment, according to news website the College Fix, which first reported on the lawsuit. The Department of the Interior and BLM declined to comment.
