The Hood Museum of Art began its NAGPRA protocol in 1993 when it provided inventories to all federally
recognized tribes and the Abenaki, a tribe without federal recognition on whose homeland Dartmouth sits. The
original inventory included information for those items that may be sacred objects, unassociated funerary
objects, or objects of cultural patrimony. Inventories of human remains were also completed in consultation
with several tribes. Since then, a handful of visits from tribal leaders have been made to the museum which
resulted in repatriations and updated inventories.
Today, we are revisiting our NAGPRA work at the Hood Museum where the cultural heritage fellow and associate curator of Native American art, Jami Powell, are developing a plan to re-inventory and consult with appropriate tribal nations regarding 19 sets of “culturally unidentifiable” human remains and associated funerary objects within the museum’s collection. The team looks forward to completing the research, consultations, and relationship-building necessary to return these ancestors in the coming year.
