00:00.00 heritagevoices Welcome to heritage voices episode 78 wait a second is it sorry guys. 00:12.20 heritagevoices Think that was the lock up. So. 00:19.47 heritagevoices Um, oh yeah, okay I met sorry all right I'm just going in. 00:29.36 heritagevoices Welcome to heritage voices episode 79 I'm Jessica e quinto and I'm your host and today we are talking about the intensives I'm Justica Quinto and I'm your host and today we are talking about the intensive nag press summer training and education. Before we begin I'd like to honor it recording on today are part of the noch or people's treaty lands the daneta and the ancestral puebloan homeland and today we have chance ward and Jane Lee Thomas on the show. Very excited to have both of you. 00:50.83 Chance Ward Um. 00:56.78 Chance Ward Are. 01:04.23 heritagevoices Jane Lee Thomas is the nagra director at Indiana University she has a master's degree in resource management and a ph d in archaeology from the University Of Edinburgh and Scotland. 01:06.72 Chance Ward Are. 01:13.46 Jayne_Leigh Thomas Hello. 01:16.52 heritagevoices All right and chance ward was born and raised in Eagle Butte South Dakota on the Cheyenne River sioux tribe reservation and is a proud member of the lakota nation. He is a graduate from the University Of Colorado Museum and field studies program and an alumnus of Fort Lewis college 01:23.39 Chance Ward Are. 01:35.67 heritagevoices Chance has done crm work in the 4 corners area and is currently the new nagpa coordinator for history colorado all right? Well welcome to the show guys very excited to have both of you. You're you're both people I've had in mind for a long time. So very excited. We're getting to do this? yeah. 01:41.13 Jayne_Leigh Thomas Just both. 01:41.18 Chance Ward Hello everybody. 01:51.62 Jayne_Leigh Thomas Well thank you for having us. 01:55.49 Chance Ward Um, yeah, thanks for having us on. Um, ah yeah I can do it right now. 01:55.63 heritagevoices Ah, all right? um and sorry chance did you want to jump in at all now with the history Colorado thing or do you want to do that later like when you first. Okay. 02:09.56 Chance Ward Um, see I do want to state that I am not representing my position as the niagara coordinator at History Colorado and I will be only speaking as myself. 02:25.64 heritagevoices Which makes sense because you are part of the field school as yourself. So it's perfect. Yes, all right? Um, well I guess now that we're we're talking about the field school. 02:28.53 Chance Ward Yes. 02:39.53 heritagevoices Um, Jane Lee do you want to give a little bit of intro about um, you know the basics of what the nagra field school was and um, what is nagre for for anyone. That's not familiar with what nagpro is. 02:41.74 Chance Ward Um. 02:52.64 Jayne_Leigh Thomas Sure so ah, nagper is the native american graves protection and repatriation act which was passed November Sixteenth Nineteen Ninety ah negpa is basically humans rights law which provides a legal mechanism for the return of native american and native hawaiian ancestral remains and their belongings back to communities in addition to objects of cultural patrimony and sacred objects belonging to communities. 03:16.67 Chance Ward Are. 03:20.45 Jayne_Leigh Thomas So in a nutshell that is as what the nagra law is the nagra summer training program or field school is a week long training that was funded this year as part of a werner grand project focusing on the ethical treatment of human remains and originally. The idea came from the fact that there is very little to no nagpa training nationwide. There are no master's degrees in nagra or compliance work or repatriation and there are very few semester long courses. A lot of the information that. 03:43.10 Chance Ward Um. 03:59.92 Jayne_Leigh Thomas Students receive about nagpra a lot of times that is by Faculty who have never done nagpra and they have no experience working with indigenous communities and so students are not prepared to enter the workforce being able to collaborate with. 04:07.96 heritagevoices Um. 04:18.38 Jayne_Leigh Thomas Indigenous communities or have any knowledge of how nagra works and unfortunately a lot of situations arise where a staff member is hired and they're told well you also have to do nagpra and they don't have any experience and there's no training for them anywhere and. 04:32.34 Chance Ward Fruit. 04:38.24 Jayne_Leigh Thomas And addition to students we wanted to create a training that would be open for anyone whether that be federal agents tribal elders tribal archeologists graduate students undergraduates current employed faculty members and. Yeah, we're very excited that it looks like we will be able to have this training again next year and hopefully we are going to be looking into funding sources that will allow it to be an annual sustainable program every summer 05:07.76 heritagevoices Awesome! All right? So where did where did this idea come from. How did you guys get to the point that you knew that you wanted to do this. 05:08.56 Chance Ward I. 05:19.50 Jayne_Leigh Thomas Um, a lot of it was just um, kind of encountering situations where students and other folks weren't really aware of how the law worked and it was kind of a person. A complaint of mine that a lot of. 05:29.74 heritagevoices Um, when you. 05:33.89 Jayne_Leigh Thomas Faculty who were teaching nagbra had never done nagbra those that were doing niara work because they're so busy working on compliance issues. They're not the ones that are teaching classes and we just really recognized myself and um, my collaborator at the University Of Illinois Urban Band of Champpaign christianarupa that. 05:37.35 heritagevoices Um, brave. 05:43.20 heritagevoices And. 05:53.25 Jayne_Leigh Thomas There's just no nag for training nationwide for anyone. There are very limited. Um, National Historic excuse me National Preservation institute trainings. But they're very expensive and we wanted to have something that also wasn't cost prohibitive and so we started looking for Grant opportunities and that. 06:04.81 heritagevoices Um, from. 06:12.86 Jayne_Leigh Thomas Grant money actually paid for all of our indigenous applicants and the rest of the participants. They just had to get to Bloomington there was no additional fee for them to attend. 06:15.70 heritagevoices Pass olson. 06:25.21 heritagevoices Dang Wow That's awesome. Okay, and that's also I I didn't know that that there's no programs across the country that you know like there's no masters anywhere or anything. 06:33.25 Jayne_Leigh Thomas No and a lot of the and what students are generally getting is that Nagpro was a law the Kennewick man case or the ancient. 1 case was a court case and. 06:46.52 heritagevoices Um, Aha ah. 06:47.24 Jayne_Leigh Thomas A very vague recommendation that folks consult and collaborate with indigenous communities but students are not taught how to do that and there are certain protocols per se on and how to approach a tribe or how to collaborate with tribal communities and and students are not being set up for any amount of Success. But. That aside there are other individuals as I said that come to the nagra field already as professionals and so what are those folks supposed to do if all of a sudden they are tasked with nagpra work. But they're not a student where do they go to get any sort of training. 07:11.66 heritagevoices And here. 07:13.41 Chance Ward You tell music. 07:22.63 heritagevoices Right. 07:24.76 Jayne_Leigh Thomas National nagbra has some trainings on Youtube but again that a lot of that is just what the law is. It's not the actual hands-on logistics of how to do nagpro work and so that was something we really wanted to incorporate into this training. 07:34.25 heritagevoices And. 07:40.67 heritagevoices Um, yeah, yeah, yeah that that makes a lot of sense. Um shoot and I had a thought where to go? Um, ah. 07:51.11 Chance Ward Um. 07:53.87 heritagevoices It's gonna come to me at 3 am m anyway I'll move ont um but got something you said really resonated and I was like oh I want to touch all that and then it went. Um, yeah, it's not coming back. Okay, um. 08:11.37 heritagevoices Right? So okay so you guys had this idea that you wanted to do this this nagarra training and then and then what. 08:22.00 Jayne_Leigh Thomas Well, we'd actually been I'd been complaining about it for years and Christiana found the grant opportunity and contacted me and said you know you're the thing you're always complaining about what do you think about this so I thought actually that could work. Um. So yeah, that's that's kind of something I've been complaining about for years. 08:44.58 heritagevoices Um, and then what was it like setting that up like how did you decide? Um, you know what needed to be in that training. How did you decide? um. 08:51.97 Jayne_Leigh Thomas Well, we we decided it would be a week long and originally we anticipated only taking 10 to 15 people when we put out the call for applicants. We made sure that it was not. Based on number of degrees. It didn't have anything to do with your publication record or being a student. We had people write a 100 to 200 word kind of summary of why they needed the nagbra training and why that would be relevant to the work that they're doing. We were completely surprised to have nearly 100 applicants. 09:27.94 heritagevoices Um, whoa. 09:28.54 Jayne_Leigh Thomas Which was way more than we anticipated and like I said this was we had applications come in from retired faculty tribal archeologists folks that work for federal agencies and at that point we realized that Yes, again, this just was a reflection of. The dire need for this kind of training and we ended up deciding to take 40 people instead of 10 We took all of our native American applicants and then we had to look through. Everyone's applications to take the the remaining. 09:52.41 heritagevoices Now. 10:03.71 Jayne_Leigh Thomas Folks that would be able to attend most of the training for that week. It was a full full five days and some of the training was taught by guest speakers. We had five native american. Individuals do part of the training because I wanted people to hear from native American Museum Professionals Native American Elders Native American Archaeologists rather than just myself I'm not native american and so I wanted. To make sure that the training was hearing from native american voices as well. 10:41.41 heritagevoices Yeah, and we are. We are very sad that Carlton couldn't join us today. He was one of the the instructors of the last second something came up and so Carlton if you're if you're out there listening. We're thinking of you and we're we're very sad. You're not here with us. We may. 10:55.81 Chance Ward We miss you Carlton. 11:01.52 heritagevoices Um, and you can obviously listen to Carlton on the a life in ruins podcast um, he ah he got his start in podcasting by by coming on this show and he was like I want to do this so I will take full credit for that. You're welcome. Um. 11:20.14 heritagevoices All right? So okay I want to I want to make sure that chance has a ah chance to jump in here. Um, and chance how did you hear about all of this. 11:25.46 Chance Ward Um, it's. 11:31.62 Chance Ward Um, um. 11:36.31 Chance Ward Let let's see I have to think about it for a second. Um you know I think I actually heard about it through Carlton and I think yeah yeah, good old Carlton always sending me things even middle of the night. 11:42.86 heritagevoices That Carlson guy. 11:53.49 Chance Ward Um, yeah, got it from Carlton and I don't think I would have heard about it if it wasn't for him I know because my grads my grad school program they try to send everything out. They can to their students but this was not one of them and then I saw it. 12:09.52 heritagevoices Finish. 12:12.80 Chance Ward A bit later on the nagpra community of practice Facebook page and then I kind of shared it out to my grad student cohort and then to a few other people that I've either worked with or. 12:22.55 Jayne_Leigh Thomas For. 12:29.33 Chance Ward You know were other native people either in archeology anthropology or doing museum work and I tried to get them to sign up for it too or apply for it. 12:39.36 heritagevoices Um, yeah, okay so um, well let's talk about what it actually looked like and um, so first um Jane Lee you started to talk about. You know you had these these 5 indigenous instructors. 12:45.54 Chance Ward Are. 12:53.56 Chance Ward Which. 12:55.20 heritagevoices But can you um, give kind of ah a quick overview of um, the the different topics that were covered like the structure of what those five days looked like paint is a picture. 13:08.80 Jayne_Leigh Thomas Sure, um, so we had ah a large welcome breakfast and the morning on. Um Monday we wanted everyone to kind of even though it was gonna be a short week to try to create some sort of sense of community. Um, and that's really also important in nagra work and. 13:20.95 heritagevoices Are. 13:26.65 Jayne_Leigh Thomas And we were quite thrilled to hear that throughout the week folks were going out for dinner and going bowling and doing pub quiz and and very quickly became kind of close which was I didn't anticipate but it was quite quite nice. Um, a lot of the the training that myself presented was. 13:34.64 Chance Ward You know. 13:45.84 Jayne_Leigh Thomas A lot of you know nagpro 2 what is the law. What does it require the the legal step-by-step talking about consultation. Um, based on some you know what consultation is what it isn't talking about how um tribes need to be put in the driver seat. And making a lot of the decisions and that the museum needs to step back and a lot of based on the experiences and that I've heard from you know the feedback I received from the communities I work with and a lot of tribal elders. We talked a little bit about the angel mounds repatriation which was a large repatriation that iu had completed in 2021 that was used as a case study to show kind of a step by step from beginning to end. Um, ah repatriation case study. And then also talking about repatriation and repburial and a lot of that is again from the university side and that's what I was presenting. But even some of the logistics. For example, if you are asked by a community to escort the ancestors to them. How do you do that? How do you get. 14:41.14 Chance Ward Are. 14:54.16 Jayne_Leigh Thomas Ancestor remains through Tsa. How do you respectfully travel. Ah you know, but also keeping in mind you know doing what the tribe wants you to do and if that means rehousing then rehouse if they don't want you to rehouse? don't rehouse. And just really talking about all of those really the details of how to actually do things rather than what the law just says. 15:23.50 heritagevoices Um, so that is a good question. How do you deal with ts. 15:30.32 Jayne_Leigh Thomas Oh um, well yeah I mean then that was not really something I was ever taught it was kind of a throw in the deep end kind of figure it out as you go across the United States several years ago tsa did 15:32.37 Chance Ward Um. 15:34.53 heritagevoices Excuse me. 15:46.60 Jayne_Leigh Thomas Some sort of investigation to try to see if anything potentially dangerous was getting through Tsa and out of 70 airports 67 of those failed one of those in Indianapolis and that's you know the airport that we would go out of and. 15:58.49 heritagevoices Swa. 16:05.20 Jayne_Leigh Thomas You know one of the things that I would do if I was asked to escort ancestors back to a community which I have been asked to do several times is to have tsa on speed dial and to know the contact have them meet you at the security gate the morning of your flight. Send all of the information about your flight beforehand. But there's also out of Washington Dc there's a program called tse cares and their role is to ensure an efficient means of travel. Particularly if for example, native american communities are wanting to travel with eagle feathers on a plane. Um I contacted folks at Tsa cares. But also Tsa Indianapolis and let them know well in advance of what I was planning to do having a letter from the tribal community that says I am permitted to do this and this is federal law. And then deferring to the tribes on how they would like their ancestors to travel and you know with Indianapolis tsa failing their assessment. The only way to get through security is either to have the container x-ray or looked through in a private room. And knowing all that in advance allowing the tribe or having the tribe make that decision and then going through. We never tell the airlines because Airlines have rules about human remains on a plane being under the plane in a coffin or a funerate urn. 17:18.51 heritagevoices Um, students. 17:20.91 heritagevoices Yeah. 17:35.89 Jayne_Leigh Thomas And in some instances that won't work particularly when the tribal communities I've worked with have said that they do not want their ancestors to be um, underneath the plane and so we don't tell the airline. 17:49.72 heritagevoices Um, yeah, wow, That's I mean talk about things that that you would never get in a in a class but really important I would have had no idea. 17:56.46 Jayne_Leigh Thomas 2 4 I Mean the the key and all that is is you know is again. The tribes are making the decision about all this if they are deciding. That's what they wish is that you will be escorting their ancestors that they are making all of the decisions about. 18:09.38 heritagevoices Um, yeah. 18:20.19 Jayne_Leigh Thomas How the ancestors will go through security how they will be transported in any of the other specific details Sometimes tribal communities will come to a university and pick up their ancestors or cultural items and escort them home. And then I would have no additional participation in that process sometimes a community has asked me to escort their ancestors by myself to their community. But I've also had several instances where tribal communities will come to our university to pick up their ancestors. 18:38.39 heritagevoices Um, for her. 18:57.69 Jayne_Leigh Thomas But have invited me and asked me to come back to the community with them to participate in the reburial ceremony. 19:05.64 heritagevoices Um, wow all right? we'll um, we're already at our first break. It's kind of crazy. But um, when we come back I'd love to hear more chance about um you know like. How your um background at Fort Lewis and at the University Of Colorado like how that um, prepared you for this this field school and um, what you felt like you um, learned or took from it that was maybe the same or different from from your previous background. Um, so we'll we'll talk about that right? when we come back. 19:39.84 Jayne_Leigh Thomas Let's come the pro.