NAGPRA & CalNAGPRA

The Native American Graves Protection and Repatriation Act (NAGPRA) of 1990 and the California Native American Graves Protection and Repatriation Act (CalNAGPRA) of 2001 establish the legal rights of lineal descendants, Tribal Nations, and Native Hawaiian Organizations with regard to their ancestral remains and cultural items (funerary objects, sacred items, and objects of cultural patrimony).

The laws respectively require any institution receiving federal/state funding to complete summaries and inventories of collections that may contain ancestral remains or cultural items, and to notify and consult with possible lineal descendants, culturally affiliated Tribal Nations, or Native Hawaiian Organizations on the repatriation and appropriate handing of these collections.

For more information regarding NAGPRA, please visit the National NAGPRA website.

For more information on CalNAGPRA, please visit the NAHC's CalNAGPRA website.

Since 1965, Cal State East Bay has stewarded both Native American and non-Native American cultural materials. Our repatriation efforts focus on ethnographic items donated to the C.E. Smith Museum of Anthropology, as well as ancestors and archaeological materials housed by the Anthropology Department. Ethnographic items come from around the globe, including the continental United States, Alaska, and Hawaii. The pre-contact archaeological materials primarily originate from sites in Alameda and Contra Costa counties, with several small sites from Santa Clara and Solano counties.

Addressing NAGPRA compliance has been a continuous process at Cal State East Bay, which began in the 1990s when the institution was known as Cal State Hayward. We have submitted NAGPRA Summaries and Culturally Unidentifiable Native American Inventories to the National NAGPRA Program, and, with the advent of a California database, we have also provided updated Summaries and Inventories to the California Native American Heritage Commission to comply with CalNAGPRA requirements. Our documents are subject to revision based on tribal consultation, updates to NAGPRA and CalNAGPRA regulations, newly discovered collection records, and changes in tribal recognition.

Moratorium on Future Collections: Senate Resolution on Repatriation and Protection of Native Human Remains at CSUEB and Protection from Future Collection - 20-21 BAS 5 

• NAGPRA – Cal State East Bay submitted inventories (considered culturally unidentifiable) from California, and summaries of ethnographic items originating in the Untied States in the 1990s. They can be reviewed at the Inventory and Summary Databases on the NPS website.
• CalNAGPRA - Preliminary inventories and summaries of Cal State East Bay’s archaeological and ethnographic items from California were submitted to the California Native American Heritage Commission (NAHC), as required under CalNAGPRA. These inventories and summaries are now available for review on the NAHC's website.
• Please contact the NAGPRA Coordinator, Marjorie Rhodes-Ousley, at marjorie.rhodesousley@csueastbay.edu for more detailed information.