@FootnotesAnthro @KrystianaKrupa @Savvy_Newell
What is this newest Footnotes post? Something feels icky about having two white women talk about how NAGPRA, as it is currently being utilized, is harming Native people. So here are my notes...

Weird way to open this issue. BLM and NAGPRA have little in common. Your recent attempts at consciousness raising are the lives Native and Black people have dealt with forever. Don’t conflate issues of police brutality, Black death, and public lynching, with Indigenous struggles

for recognition and repatriation of their ancestral remains. We (Black people and Indigenous people) support each other and are fighting for similar goals, but this is not the space to collapse different projects for your own catchy topic sentence.

This is not personal… This is related to the graduate training received at IU and therefore should be considered as a departmental level issue.

Related: A personal issue might be when a Native American woman asked for an apology after you traumatized her by retelling (multiple

times) the horrific treatment of Native American remains by IU’s Glenn Black Lab and former members of IU Anthropology. When she asked YOU and your lab for apologies, you dissolved that friendship. That would be personal.

That woman’s concerns seem to have impacted your research profoundly as your dissertation would suggest.

When the Native American woman demanded answers for disrespect occurring currently at IU, YOU and your lab remained silent and continued to perpetuate the issues you state here. You all avoided the spirit of NAGPRA, which at its heart is a law to reconcile with Native Americans.

IU Anthropology refused to do that when a Native woman came to you with concerns.

"When faculty do this, they are not only perpetuating this violence themselves, but also teaching their students that this is acceptable behavior."

A lesson that seems to have been learned by anthropology's students well.

You say this as though that is not entirely the point of these positions. When Native people on the periphery of these departments suggest changes, and volunteer their labor and expertise they are pushed away. Keeping Anthropology and NAGPRA white allows for slow repatriation and

a “balance” between science and ethical treatment. As you say earlier in this piece, it is about human rights. From my engagement with Native communities, repatriation and land back are not meant to be negotiated on white people’s terms.

IU received a grant from NSF to work with Native communities and continues to say that it is educating others for Native peoples. This seems to run contrary to what you are saying in this piece. How can they be a leader in the field who can win $349,876.00 and another grant for

$194,685.00 but in this piece you are stating that they don’t even teach ethics and basic human compassion to their students? This seems like a huge issue!

Is this your original idea or the have Indigenous people been saying this FOR LITERALLY EVER. It might be good to cite the hundreds of written documents by indigenous people on how shitty it is for academics to take from them and never consult with them.

Who do you consider a colleague? You just said that Native people are rare in NAGPRA work and you will not hear the concerns of community members. The gatekeeping here is ridiculous.

Which Indigenous people? It seems that from IU’s examples there are the “right” ones and the “wrong” ones.

"NAGPRA is heavily rooted in Indigenous knowledge and worldviews and the historical trauma caused by the perpetually white field of anthropology. "

That no one, including these authors, want to address.

To whom? It should be to Native people but these policies aren’t for them. They’re just used as legal cover.

And who will keep them honest when there is no one teaching ethics? No one willing to condemn faculty and researchers who ignore NAGPRA. Who is going to do the work of enforcement?

This paragraph is wishful thinking and also ignores the past several years of work at IU specifically to deal with these issues. BIPOC scholars have been saying this. This paragraph is re-packaged ideas BIPOC ideas by white women…

I’ve never been more angry to not see any mention of MMIW in an article. The erasure of Native people is not only in the past. This is a continued genocide that needs recognition.

@IU_Anthropology @IUMuseum @crres_iub @IUBloomington @LanaRuck @ScIUBlog @emilyvanawesome @SavvyOlogy @ZoeSTodd