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Native American News Roundup Feb. 4-10, 2024

WASHINGTON — U.S. Senator Brian Schatz took to the Senate floor on February 1 to demand that museums and federal agencies comply with the law and return to Native American tribes all ancestral remains and funerary objects in their collections.

Passed in 1990, the Native American Graves Protection and Repatriation Act, or NAGPRA, directs all federally funded institutions to catalog all Native American human remains, funerary items and objects of cultural significance in their collections, submit the information to a National Park Service database, and work with tribes and Native Hawaiian organizations, or NHOs, to repatriate them.

A January update to NAGPRA now requires institutions to “obtain free, prior and informed consent from lineal descendants, tribes or NHOs before allowing any exhibition of, access to, or research on human remains or cultural items.”

“Give the items back. Comply with federal law. Hurry,” the Hawaii senator said.

Schatz credited institutions that have stepped..

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US, Japan Accelerate War Drills to Deter China 

US, Japan Accelerate War Drills to Deter China

U.S. Marines execute command and control from a combat operations center during Keen Edge 22 at Camp Hansen, Japan, Jan. 31, 2022. The U.S. and Japan finished Keen Edge 24, a biannual bilateral command post exercise, Feb. 8, 2024. (U.S. Marine Corps)

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