For the Fallon Paiute-Shoshone Tribe, the date did not make the person less connected to the land.

It made the institutional refusal to return him more consequential.

The Tribe’s Claim

The Native American Graves Protection and Repatriation Act, or NAGPRA, became federal law in 1990.

It required federally funded museums and federal agencies to inventory Native American human remains and certain cultural items and created procedures through which tribes could seek their return.

The law was a response to a long history in which Native graves had been excavated, ancestral remains had been stored in museums, and sacred or funerary objects had been collected without the consent of the communities from which they came.

For generations, institutions often treated Native human remains as scientific property.

NAGPRA forced museums and agencies to recognize that those collections were not simply repositories of data.

They were also places where the dead of living peoples had been kept.

In 1997, the Fallon Paiute-Shoshone Tribe made a repatriation claim for the Spirit Cave remains and associated materials.