NAGPRA Compliance Statement

In 1990 Congress passed the Native American Graves Protection and Repatriation Act (NAGPRA) to define the manner in which American museums should interact with the remains of Native Peoples and objects associated with those remains. The purpose of this act was to initiate a dialogue between museums and tribal communities to resolve the possession, status and use of Native remains, associated funerary objects, sacred objects and objects of cultural patrimony in the collections of museums, universities and governmental agencies.

In anticipation of this resolution, the Chucalissa Museum is engaged in a project to inventory and describe all of the Native remains and associated objects in our collection. We are presently reconciling our physical inventories with those submitted to the National Park Service in 1995 (www.cast.uark.edu/other/nps/nagpra/) so that we might begin a dialogue with contingent tribal communities.

We look forward to working with these communities to engage in cooperative programs that benefit Native peoples, the Museum and our visitors.

NAGPRA related inquiries and correspondence should be directed to chucalissa@Memphis.edu.