UCLA staff 'visit and talk to' Native American artifacts upon tribe request under Biden-era rule

Staff at the University of California, Los Angeles are periodically “visiting” and “talking to” Native American artifacts in university collections at the request of tribal representatives, according to comments made during a recent webinar. The practice comes as public universities face expanded federal compliance requirements under updated Native American Graves Protection and Repatriation Act regulations.

Allison Fischer-Olson, UCLA’s repatriation coordinator and curator of Native American cultures at the Fowler Museum, described the requests during a webinar focused on NAGPRA compliance.

“Sometimes we are asked to periodically visit and talk to cultural items that may be considered relatives and shouldn’t be left alone or be so isolated,” she said.

NAGPRA, first enacted in 1990, governs how public institutions handle Native American human remains and certain cultural items. Originally focused on returning remains to descendants, the law has since expanded. In 2024, the Biden administration introduced regulatory changes, including what Fischer-Olson described as a new “duty of care.”

Under the updated rules, universities must consult tribes on “culturally appropriate storage, treatment, and handling of all ancestors and cultural items.” Institutions must also obtain “free prior and informed consent prior to any access, any exhibition, any research on NAGPRA eligible ancestors or cultural items,” she said.

When asked what “culturally appropriate care” entails, Fischer-Olson said tribes may request that staff not “open the box … unless a tribe is present,” and in some cases restrict access to tribe members only, even though the university owns and houses the materials.

“We do our best to implement as much as we can …” she said, adding, “Their communities know best.” The 2024 regulatory revisions also direct institutions to treat tribal knowledge as “expert knowledge. Previously, we would have relied on more traditional or Western lines of evidence,” Fischer-Olson said, citing anthropology, archaeology, and geography.

“At this point in NAGPRA, a tribe can come with their traditional knowledge… and we can consider their knowledge to be expert knowledge. That holds up, actually more strongly if you look at the regulations, than some of these previous lines of evidence that were required,” she added.

Fischer-Olson said repatriation efforts are ongoing across University of California campuses, with teams conducting searches to ensure compliance. "Each team on each campus is literally searching every room possible to make sure that there’s nothing… we leave behind,” she said.

Earlier this month, UCLA repatriated more than 700 Native American artifacts, including photo negatives, to one tribe.