The federal government has made it easier for Native Hawaiian families to make claims for the return of iwi, or ancestral remains, currently housed in museums and other institutions.
Since 1990, repatriation efforts under the Native American Grave Protection and Repatriation Act were limited to claims by Native Hawaiian organizations, like the Office of Hawaiian Affairs.
Recent changes to the law regulators call "NAGPRA" will provide greater deference to Native Hawaiian families, as long as they provide a reasonable belief of their connection to specific ancestral remains.
"That’s definitely the biggest change in the NAGPRA regulations that applies to all Native Americans, not just Native Hawaiians, and should really help especially where there’s some ambiguity in situations where there’s some ambiguity in where certain human remains came from," said Kamakana Ferreira, the lead compliance specialist at OHA."
"Hopefully this will encourage more claimants to come forward and we see the process move a lot faster and museums put up less roadblocks."
Ferreira has spent more than a decade handling repatriation and historic preservation issues for the agency.
"Now there’s supposed to be more deference to the claimants. We don’t want cases that take years and years. It’s draining. It’s time consuming. And it can be costly. So hopefully this helps everybody involved with the ultimate goal of getting ancestral remains back to where they belong," he continued.
Interior Department Secretary Deb Haaland said the updates to the NAGPRA are critical steps to strengthening the authority and role of Indigenous communities in the repatriation process.
The law has been under review by the U.S. Interior Department since October 2022.
