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\n\tLate 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.<\/p>\n
\n\tIn the case, filed July 24, WAPA, a Wyoming-based nonprofit representing field archaeologists, academic researchers, and museum professionals, calls for the court to \u201chalt ongoing unlawful transfers of, and denial of research access to, archaeological resources owned, administered, curated, or regulated by the United States\u201d under the 1990 statute known as the Native American Graves Protection and Repatriation Act (NAGPRA).<\/p>\n
\n\tNAGPRA 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.<\/p>\n
\n\tIn January 2023,\u00a0ProPublica<\/em>\u00a0published an investigation\u00a0into 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 \u201cculturally unidentifiable.\u201d The 2024 regulations were meant to close that loophole. <\/p>\n \n\tThe 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.<\/p>\n \n\tNotably, WAPA\u2019s complaint does not target the 2024 rule alone. It challenges the entire regulatory scheme Interior developed \u201cbetween 2010 and 2024,\u201d arguing that Interior rewrote NAGPRA in a way that \u201cexceeds the boundaries of the 1990 statute.\u201d 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\u00a0beyond the authority Congress delegated to the agency.<\/p>\n \n\tWAPA argues that Interior Department\u2019s rewriting of NAGPRA rules \u201cinjures\u201d the association, its members, and the public by \u201cinterfering with their ability to investigate, study, document, preserve, and curate the archaeological record.\u201d The complaint specifically challenges how the new regulations loosen the rules for establishing cultural affiliation; expand the statutory definitions of \u201ccultural item,\u201d \u201cfunerary object,\u201d \u201csacred object,\u201d and \u201cobject of cultural patrimony\u201d; and require agencies and museums to defer to a broad category of \u201cNative American traditional knowledge\u201d in a way that, WAPA says, sidesteps the burden of proof the statute requires.<\/p>\n \n\tThe complaint is careful to note that WAPA does not oppose NAGPRA or \u201clawful repatriation,\u201d 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.<\/p>\n \n\tThose 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.<\/p>\n \n\tWAPA 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\u2019t be reclassified as a NAGPRA \u201ccultural item\u201d just because it turned up at a site that also contained human remains.<\/p>\n \n\t\u201cSince 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\u2019s ultra vires<\/em> redefinition of NAGPRA\u2019s key terms, expanding the scope of material subject to transfer far beyond the scope of that authorized by Congress,\u201d the complaint says.<\/p>\n \n\tWAPA and the University of Wyoming did not respond to requests for comment, according to news website the College Fix<\/em>, which first reported on the lawsuit. The Department of the Interior and BLM declined to comment.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n [analyse_source url=”https:\/\/www.artnews.com\/art-news\/news\/wyoming-association-of-archaeologists-lawsuit-nagpra-1234794355\/”]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" [analyse_image type=”featured” src=”https:\/\/www.artnews.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/08\/2277773890-e1785962759822.jpg?w=1024″] 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, […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[61,226],"class_list":["post-2079652","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-politics","tag-artnews-com","tag-crawlmanager"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2079652","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=2079652"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2079652\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=2079652"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=2079652"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=2079652"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}