Heritage Voices · The Archaeology Podcast Network

The 2024 Updated NAGPRA Regulations - Ep 92

·55 min·3 clips

Duty of care now limits research access and exhibition unless free, prior, and informed consent is obtained.

Jessica Iacuinto opens the discussion with the 2024 updated NAGPRA regulations. She brings together Christiana Krupa, Blythe Morrison, Jane Lee Thomas, and Chance Ward for a roundtable shaped by hands-on experience. The guests are introduced through their institutional roles and academic backgrounds, and the setup makes clear that this is a working conversation about heritage responsibility. Krupa speaks from her role as NAGPRA Program Officer at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign, with training in biological anthropology and law. Morrison brings collections management experience from Canyons of the Ancients Visitor Center and Museum, along with her perspective as a citizen of the Blackfeet Nation. Thomas adds the view from Indiana University, where she directs the NAGPRA Office, and her background includes archaeology, conservation, and business. The conversation settles quickly into the practical meaning of consultation. Morrison explains that Canyons of the Ancients is restarting consultation around its collections and trying to approach the process in a more dynamic and culturally centered way. She describes using a lexicon of terms to begin identifying objects that may be culturally significant even when an outside observer would not recognize them right away. The group asks what is expressly off limits for exhibition and research, what requires additional tribal review, and what, if anything, is okay to share without additional review. Internal guidance becomes a central theme. Morrison says those guidelines are being developed as a dynamic reference that can be updated or revoked by consulting parties. She also notes that the BLM's role is unusual because it curates collections for other agencies and entities, which complicates how duty of care is handled. The scale of the discussion is small, with only a handful of people at the BLM having it regularly. Even so, Morrison says a DOI-wide conversation is coming and that more department-level guidance is badly needed. She is direct about the limits of improvisation. The episode acknowledges that some reactions to the issue have been reactionary or performative, and Morrison argues for starting from consultation instead. That framing keeps the conversation tied to relationship rather than optics. The speakers also take time to define terms and locate the stakes in everyday institutional practice. Their pace leaves room for long answers, and the result feels careful rather than rushed. The updated regulations are treated as something that has to be worked through in collections rooms, offices, and conversations with consulting parties. By the end, the episode shows institutions trying to move from compliance language toward more culturally accountable practice. It is a measured, interview-driven discussion that keeps legal detail, heritage responsibility, and lived experience in the same frame. The closing sign-off leaves the sense that this work is continuing and still being built in public.

As heard by us

A careful look at updated NAGPRA rules, consultation, and the day-to-day work of making policy practical.

Heritage Voices stays close to the 2024 updated NAGPRA regulations and makes the work feel concrete rather than abstract. The conversation moves through consultation, collections, duty of care, and the effort to build more culturally centered internal guidance, with Christiana…

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Need a grounded take on the 2024 NAGPRA updates?

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