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.
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“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.”