#but I'd love another 4 years of Haaland as leader of the department of interior

[indo-dyke]

So since Biden appointed a native elder, Debbie Haaland, as the secretary of the department of the interior, things like this have changed (also she's made big moves for tribal treaty rights). Since the beginning of this year, all native artifacts must have informed consent given by the appropriate tribes for both display and research. If you were reading the news at the beginning of the year, there was a big to-do about museums covering indigenous displays until they could get proper permission. While this doesn't undo the harm caused by literally stealing our ancestors, it does ensure that it cannot happen again. It also improves on the 1990 Native American Graves Protection and Repatriation Act (info linked by prev), which requires museums to return items, *if* they knew the providence/native tribes could *prove* the artifacts/remains belonged to them. As you can imagine, museums had plenty of loopholes to choose from, allowing thing like the stories above to happen, where tribal members knew *exactly* who the items/remains belonged to, but couldn't prove it without an expensive legal fight.

Now however, the only has shifted to the museums who must *prove* they have permission for the artifacts/remains they have. This is HUGE. It's still early in the laws implementation, so I didn't know for sure how this has affected repatriation, but in theory this should increase the amount of artifacts/remains returned to their families. If nothing else, it will prevent museums from displaying our ancestors for colonizers to gawk at.

If you want to read more about the effect this had at the beginning of the year, here's a CNN News article:

If you want to read the actual ruling:

Went to the Aboriginal artifact exhibit in Chicago. And it’s interesting. How many blankets and masks and totem poles say ‘unknown source’, because every five seconds my mom would stop and point to something and say. “Pauline’s grandmother made that,” or, “That belongs to Mike’s family, I should call him” because. It’s all stolen