As an archaeologist, you picture yourself traveling to some remote location, digging into the ground, and returning to a lab in a university or museum to study the remains of past civilizations, with hopes of answering important questions.
In contrast, I’ve often found myself working to return those remains to their rightful cultures. Repatriation is the process of returning ancestral human remains and important objects to descendant populations. Since the passing of the National Museum of the American Indian Act in 1989 and the Native American Graves Protection and Repatriation Act in 1990, it has become an increasingly important part of archaeological practice, yet about 110,000 ancestors remain in collections.
