The Native American Graves Protection and Repatriation Act (NAGPRA) will be the topic of a presentation at the Sunflower Theatre in Cortez on Thursday, July 23.
Fort Lewis College anthropology professor Kathleen S. Fine-Dare will present “NAGPRA+25: Where Do We Stand? Where Are We Going?” as part of the Four Corners Lecture Series.
The 25th anniversary of the passage of NAGPRA will be observed on Nov. 16, 2015. This anniversary provides the opportunity to reflect on accomplishments, vexations, and work yet to be done in the next quarter of a century of NAGPRA compliance and scholarship.
Fine-Dare will review some of the benchmarks of this legislation through the lens of her own experience working in the early days of compliance for Fort Lewis College and Mesa Verde National Park, and as a college instructor and author whose work has focused on NAGPRA and international repatriation issues.
The latter part of the talk will engage more deeply with the Four Corners Lecture Series theme, “It’s About Time,” in reflecting how it’s high time to look more deeply at NAGPRA not only as a set of practices with which to comply but also as an intellectual and political issue tied to state “biopower” practices involving forensic and other treatments of bodies and the remains of the past as they figure in everyday life, reconciliation and ongoing mourning
Fine-Dare’s presentation will be sponsored by the Crow Canyon Archaeological Center and the Mesa Verde Foundation. All Four Corners Lecture Series events are free.
The Sunflower Theatre, a performing arts venue of public radio station KSJD, is located at 8 E. Main St., Cortez. The event begins at 7 p.m.