UC Riverside

The Native American Graves Protection and Repatriation Act (NAGPRA) was enacted in the United States in 1990 to protect the rights of the descendants of Native Americans, Native Hawaiians, and Alaska Natives to their ancestors' human remains and sacred and cultural items (25 U.S.C; 43 CFR Part 10). Although enacted to protect and ensure that ancestors and cultural remains would be returned to their Native communities for proper burial, this policy was often contested in the judicial system, such as in the case of the Kennewick Man, where Native communities were in litigation against the Army Corps of Engineers for over a decade (Bruning, 2006). A further complication of NAGPRA is its exclusive application to those Native Tribes that are federally recognized, which often delegitimizes claims from descendants of the tribes who are not federally recognized (Kelsey et al., 2011). Universities, museums, and other agencies have fought Native communities for the ownership of their Ancestors and cultural items, protecting unrestrained access and use in scientific evaluation and exhibition (Echo-Hawk, 1986). This right dispute over Ancestors and cultural belongings is not restricted to the United States Indigenous populations. Rather, this has been and continues to be an issue for Indigenous peoples globally (Lambert-Pennington, 2007). viii The cycle of finding Ancestors and returning them to their final resting place, performing burial ceremony after ceremony, and at times fighting for the rights to their ancestral remains and cultural items may exacerbate intergenerational trauma already experienced (Colwell-Chanthaphonh, 2012). This pattern not only impacts Indigenous mental health but also physical health writ large, manifesting epigenetically, with the impact passing down through generations (Youssef et al., 2018). The academy, specifically, anthropology departments may play a crucial role in perpetuating intergenerational trauma experienced by Native American students by the display and housing of sacred cultural items and ancestral remains (ARCS, 2022). To understand the complex relationship between institutional policies and the mental wellness of Native American students, this study focuses on the implications of routine exposure to these items on university and Tribal community college students. The intent was to highlight narratives of Native American university and Tribal community college students toward revealing the psychological intricacies experienced within the academic environment (Bradford, 2021). Soliciting these narratives gives these students an opportunity to voice their experiences and concerns, by which recommendations for improving future institutional policy and procedures may be derived. The desired impacts were to contribute to beneficial change by developing faculty and staff workshops, improving awareness of potential impacts on student health, and cultivate a culturally-focused mental health program that can be replicated locally, nationally, and ultimately globally, that addresses the needs of all Indigenous students.