New federal rules prompt WNMU museum changes

SILVER CITY, N.M. (KRQE) – The Western New Mexico University Museum is in the process of moving a number of Mimbres cultural items into storage. This move complies with the recent changes to the rules governing the Native American Graves Protection and Repatriation Act (NAGPRA).

According to a WNMU press release, NAGPRA requires institutions that receive federal funding to repatriate Indigenous human remains, funerary objects, sacred objects, and objects of cultural patrimony to lineal descendants or culturally affiliated tribes. A recent rule update established a five-year timeline and processes for returning the items, including consultation between museums and tribes.

“What the law is saying,” explained WNMU Museum Director Danielle Romero, “is that all cultural items cannot be accessed, researched or displayed without tribal permission [if they are] funerary, anything that can currently be used in rituals and ceremonies, and anything that this considered generally sacred.”

The release states there are multiple steps required by NAGPRA, the first being taking an inventory of Native American materials in a museum’s collection, identifying the potentially problematic ones, and removing them from displays. The next step is to consult with the tribes that are culturally or geographically connected to the specific Indigenous culture.

Romero says what makes the process challenging is that the Mimbres people dispersed into other Indigenous communities centuries ago, and consequently, it is not clear which tribes are culturally related. She says she plans on consulting with approximately 17 tribes, primarily the Puebloan peoples of New Mexico and Arizona.

Also, many collectors of Mimbres pottery looted graves and others didn’t keep track of where and how items were excavated, so there are no records to establish whether many objects are sacred or funerary.

NAGPRA was originally passed in 1990.

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