Native American Remains To Be Repatriated By TVA

Over 14,000 Native American ancestors who were found during dam building projects throughout the Tennessee valley between the 1930s and the 1970s are being repatriated, a process that has taken decades to complete. The largest single holder of Native American human remains is a federally owned power company in Tennessee.

In order to provide power to Tennessee and six other states, Congress established the Tennessee Valley Authority (TVA) as a federal organization in 1930. In order to conduct salvage archaeology and “remove everything of a cultural nature” prior to building massive dams to prevent the valley from flooding, TVA teamed up with archaeologists from nearby universities almost a century ago, according to Meg Cook, an archaeologist and NAGPRA specialist for TVA told Native News Online.

Native American Graves Protection and Repatriation Act (NAGPRA) is a piece of legislation that was passed by Congress in the year 1990. This piece of legislation directs federal agencies and museums that have possession or control over holdings or collections of Native American human remains and funerary objects to inventory these items, identify their geographic and cultural affiliations, and notify the affected Indian tribes or Native Hawaiian organization.

Nonetheless, it took TVA and other institutions across the country a total of 21 years to begin the process of culturally affiliating ancestors and restoring them to the modern-day tribal nations to which they belonged. After being singled out in a report by the Government Accountability Office (GAO) that indicated that the TVA had not returned any ancestors prior to 2011, the agency finally did so in 2011.

But it took TVA and other organizations across the country a total of 21 years to begin the process of culturally associating ancestors with their modern-day tribal countries and returning their ancestors to those nations. The Tennessee Valley Authority did not return any ancestors until 2011, far after they were singled out in a report by the Government Accountability Office (GAO) that observed that, “almost 20 years after NAGPRA, key federal agencies still have not fully complied with the act for their historical collections acquired on or before NAGPRA’s enactment.”

“There was a lot of contemplation and time spent in the past on cultural affiliation, and picking the exact correctness of the affiliation,” Cook said. “We’re just… broadening it, because tribes are able to make those determinations on their own.”

According to federal papers, the TVA has published a total of 67 notices of inventory completion since 2011 and has returned a total of 9,277 human remains along with 119,630 accompanying funeral artifacts to their respective tribal countries.

But as of this week, TVA has abandoned its piecemeal approach of posting notices of inventory completion. Instead, they have consolidated the remaining 4,871 ancestors in their possession into a single notice. These ancestors come from a variety of states and are housed in a variety of museums.

“They could have piecemealed this out, like they had been doing in the past,” said Melanie O’Brien, the National NAGPRA Program manager in reporting from Yahoo. “But TVA made the decision to change their approach and to just complete the work— the administrative regulatory process for all of these ancestors—by publishing this one notice.”

TVA’s notice extensively connected the ancestors and their goods with dozens of tribal groups whose ancestral homelands were located in Alabama, Kentucky, and Tennessee.

“We have broadly culturally affiliated, and now we want to rely on more consultations [for tribes] to tell us who is taking the lead, and how we can best meet [their] needs when it comes to preparing for reinterment,” Cook told Native News Online.

Tribes are able to officially move forward with a request for repatriation because of their widespread cultural affiliation. “Requests for repatriation may be submitted by (1) any one or more of the Indian Tribes or Native Hawaiian organizations identified in this notice [or] (2) any lineal descendant, Indian Tribe, or Native Hawaiian organization not identified in this notice who shows, by a preponderance of the evidence, that the requestor is a lineal descendant or a culturally affiliated Indian Tribe or Native Hawaiian organization,” the notice reads.

O’Brien stated that other federal organizations and museums that still have the more than 100,000 Native American ancestors that were reported under NAGPRA can take a cue from TVA’s comprehensive approach to cultural connection.

“The TVA notice demonstrates that the process for repatriation can be completed effectively and efficiently under the existing regulatory framework,” O’Brien told Native News Online.

“This notice also reflects the Department of the Interior’s stated goals in proposing regulatory changes last fall. The proposed regulations would remove the burden on Indian Tribes and Native Hawaiian organizations to initiate the repatriation process and add a requirement for museums and Federal agencies to complete the regulatory process within a set timeframe. With this notice, TVA has completed the regulatory process for more than 14,000 individuals, the largest collection of Native American human remains reported under NAGPRA.”

TVA employees have indicated to Native News Online that their work is not yet over, despite the fact that they have officially finished their documentation for NAGPRA. “We’re not saying that we’re done just because we may have completed the paperwork for NAGPRA,” Marianne Shuler, an archeologist and tribal liaison at TVA told Native News Online. “We’re probably still going to be working for a number of years to work out all the details with the tribes on how they want these individuals prepared and treated until [they] can rebury them.”