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4. If you stop to listen, you can hear their hearts beating loud.
5. Can't keep those California Indians down.
6. Hello, everyone. You're listening to American Indian Airwaves.
7. For Marcus Lopez, I'm your host, Larry Smith.
8. On today's program, the Native American Graves Protection and Repatriation Act, a U.S. congressional law in place since 1990 requiring the return of Native American ancestors, cultural patrimony, and sacred items back to Native American peoples.
9. What does NAGPRA mean with the expansion of the non-renewable resource extractive industries operations into the ocean and potentially destroying and claiming those Native American ancestors off the ocean coastlines?
10. We'll have an in-depth conversation with the leading NAGPRA attorney.
11. All that and more today on American Indian Airwaves.
12. When the moon shines bright, the lone fool in the black of night, you can hear, you can hear the whisper in the valley.
13. And you know, when Kama Kani blows to the Bahu drum, it's the warriors who are marching down the mountain.
14. Because history ain't no mystery to me.
15. The Native American Graves Protection and Repatriation Act was enacted by the United States Congress in 1990
16. with the intended purposes to protect and return Native American ancestors, funerary objects, sacred objects, and objects of cultural patrimony.
17. By enacting, by its acronym, NAGPRA, the United States Congress recognized that Native American ancestors
18. must at all times be treated with dignity and respect.
19. Congress also acknowledged that Native American ancestors and other cultural items
20. belong to the lineal descendants of indigenous peoples, Native American nations, and Native Hawaiian organizations.
21. In January of 2024, the Native American Graves Protection and Repatriation Act was modified,
22. But as ocean or aqua mining by non-renewable resource extractive industry companies for rare minerals and as part of the quote unquote green economy continues to expand, what does this mean for Native American sacred sites off the coastal shorelines of indigenous peoples' traditional territories?
23. Are there protections in place for these sacred sites What happens when private companies encounter these sacred sites Are they protected What happens to Native American ancestors What role does NAGPRA play or does it Our guest for the hour helps us
24. understand what NAGPRA is, its history, and what are its potential implications for protecting
25. sacred sites off the coastlines of what is now called the United States, but traditionally part
26. of indigenous peoples' traditional territories. Today on American Indian Airwaves, I'm joined by
27. Marcus Lopez, co-host and executive producer of American Indian Airwaves and from the Barbaranial
28. Band of the Chumash Nation. Our guest is a citizen of the Choctaw Nation of Oklahoma
29. and serves the Association on American Indian Affairs based out of Washington, D.C. as its
30. chief executive and attorney. Our guest has been practicing law for more than 24 years
31. and is a lecturer at Johns Hopkins University. Our guest also is the vice chair of the board
32. at Native Ways Federation, which educates about informed giving to Native-led nonprofits.
33. Today on American Indian Airwaves, we have the honor and pleasure of speaking with Shannon O'Loughlin,
34. And we begin today's interview asking, what is NAGPRA?
35. What do the modifications mean and their importance?
36. So the Native American Graves Protection and Repatriation Act, what we lovingly call NAGPRA,
37. was a statute passed by Congress on November 16, 1990.
38. And over more than 30 years, we've been suffering from really horrible regulations that came out of that act in 1995, where consultation was not even a defined term in those regulations.
39. So museums and other institutions were able to just kind of do whatever they want to not comply, and there was really no check against how the museums were operating repatriation and returns.
40. So the new regulations, which were passed after about 10 or 12 years of really intensive work by advocates and strong native advocates in the federal government, worked to produce a brand new set of regulations that were implemented on January 24, 2024.
41. and since then we have seen non-compliant institutions like Harvard Peabody,
42. even though we want to give them a lot of kudos for fighting the current administration,
43. they have not been a good friend when it comes to repatriation.
44. But we are seeing them publishing federal register notices
45. in which they are repatriating ancestors to Native nations.
46. And so the new regulations really brought a new level of compliance with strict timelines, with a definition of consultation, with deference to native traditional knowledge as part of how a museum makes its determinations to repatriate, and is the first time any federal law or policy has included free prior and informed consent in how it is implemented.
47. So this is really a strong repatriation law now and we seeing a lot of positive effects come out of repatriation work from institutions Now that different when it comes to graves protection and our ancestors and cultural heritage that is still in the ground
48. NAGPRA has provisions for graves protection, but it only applies to federal and tribal lands.
49. So the application of NAGPRA to ancestors and cultural heritage on site is limited because of that jurisdictional requirement.
50. Shannon, why don't you, because we interviewed in the past Suzanne Harjo, and NAGPRA is not just a temporary or just a local phenomena, but all started way back.
51. Even Vine Delorea Jr. talks about that, and Suzanne Harjo, and many other people were very instrumental.
52. It wasn't an easy thing to do.
53. Why don't you give Alicia a little bit of snippet of that particular history,
54. and there was a struggle for Native peoples all across the country.
55. It wasn't just a situation where modern legal discussions, but she had a very social movement at the time.
56. And please talk to our listeners about that.
57. Sure.
58. Repatriation has been an important part of returning our cultures and heritage back to our hearts, back to our souls, back to our people.
59. And this work in repatriation didn't start in 1990 with the advent of NAGPRA.
60. We actually see newspaper articles from back in the 1800s that express tribes working to get ancestors back from looted graves of their relatives.
61. So the idea of repatriation and return has always been something that our ancestors have fought for and have had to explain themselves and the importance of why we want our ancestors to stay in the ground, why we need our cultural heritage back.
62. We have been treated throughout history in the United States in an extremely disproportionate way where other people's bodies and religions and beliefs are protected, but not native peoples.
63. And so we have institutions, not just in the United States, but all around the world that display our Native ancestors' bodies, that display our sacred heritage behind glass with a label.
64. None of those things educate anyone about who Native people are today or who we were.
65. And they haven't involved the native voice in helping to teach the Western world about who we are.
66. It's a completely dismembered educational exercise that academia, anthropologists, archaeologists have taken to build their careers.
67. So repatriation is nothing new.
68. what I believe happened in some of federal Indian law and policy history
69. generally came out of the 1970s when self-determination was growing in native
70. country and also being better recognized by the US federal government and the American Indian Religious Freedom Act was really the start of recognition and acceptance that Native people had different religions and those religions were land and that
71. we needed access to those sacred places in our ancestors' burials where those lands
72. had been taken away from us.
73. Unfortunately, the American Indian Religious Act was found to not have any enforcement procedures.
74. So there was nothing the U.S. Supreme Court said it could do to enforce violations of the American Indian Religious Freedom Act.
75. But repatriation became more and more important in the 80s.
76. there was a state court case out of Louisiana in which the state, with the help of the Tunica Biloxi tribe, worked to return stolen cultural heritage from a mound site, and it was known as the Tunica Treasure.
77. The Tunica Biloxi people actually built a cultural museum and facility to take care of this very large looted site and those items that came from that site.
78. But they won that state court case against the archaeologists and others that had looted the site.
79. And that became one of the pillars or force, if you will, to push forward repatriation legislation.
80. And the first opportunity that we had to push repatriation legislation is when the United States was considering bringing the George Gustav High American Indian Museum in New York City into the Smithsonian to create the National Museum of the American Indian.
81. The Association on American Indian Affairs, NARF, and Morningstar Institute were the primary advocates that were working nationally with Native nations and with the federal government to help them create repatriation legislation as part of bringing in that institution into the Smithsonian.
82. because that institution held such an enormous, millions of items of collections,
83. and that place, that Indian Museum in New York City, had been considered kind of a trading epicenter.
84. Archaeologists, anthropologists, other museums would go and trade or pay for cultural heritage and ancestors from that institution.
85. It was a horrible institution. It was investigated by New York State, among other things,
86. And so it was really important and imperative, and Congress even agreed so when they went into the, I guess, the basements of the National Museum of Natural History and saw boxes after boxes after boxes of our native bodies stored in those boxes and basements.
87. So Congress absolutely wanted to change this trajectory.
88. They saw that this was more than discriminatory.
89. It was just abhorrent to treat people's relatives in this fashion
90. and that there must be repatriation provisions.
91. And so the first repatriation law came from the NMAI Act.
92. It was later amended to be more in line with NAGPRA,
93. but it's still a law that's different than NAGPRA,
94. and it only applies to the Smithsonian Institution.
95. So after that was passed in 89, new legislation was drafted to apply nationally to institutions throughout the United States and federal agencies.
96. And that became NAGPRA.
97. And that's what we set forward a comprehensive regulatory regime to make sure that Native nations have their ancestors and cultural heritage returned.
98. And we want to remind listeners you're listening to American Indian Airwaves.
99. We're speaking with Shannon O'Loughlin, a citizen of the Choctaw Nation of Oklahoma, and serves the Association on American Indian Affairs as its chief executive and attorney.
100. She's speaking on the Native American Graves Protection and Repatriation Act, its modifications, and the expansion of the non-renewable resource extractive industries operations into the ocean.
101. And what does that mean for indigenous peoples, traditional territories, sacred sites, ancestors, and other forms of cultural patrimony as these mining operations continue to expand?
102. And now back to the interview.
103. And there is no exception to that requirement.
104. The only exception is if an institution can prove it has a right of possession.
105. That means at the time of the original taking of that ancestor or those cultural items, that they actually had consent from the authorized nation or parties of that nation that would be able to give that item up, right?
106. So there is no exception to repatriation unless an institution can prove that they are the proper owner, and that rarely, rarely happens.
107. NAGPRA also has a criminal provision that prevents the trafficking of Native ancestors and cultural heritage from institutions that are supposed to be complying with NAGPRA.
108. Shannon, when we talk about these new modifications for NAGPRA, what are you seeing in terms of compliance and enforcement with NAGPRA?
109. because so much about indigenous people's ancestors,
110. sacred items and forms of cultural patrimony,
111. not only are they part of who people are as living traditions,
112. living peoples, living cultures,
113. but also the connection right to the land where these ancestors,
114. sacred items and forms of cultural patrimony come from.
115. And so, you know, what are you seeing in terms of NAGPRA compliance?
116. Compliance with NAGPRA has been difficult until these new regulations. So the new regulations have required institutions to follow strict timelines that they never had to follow before.
117. And that has really helped to support an increase in institutions complying with NAGPRA who had not complied generally because they didn't want to or didn't know how.
118. So compliance has increased.
119. I don't have the data to back up that statement right this minute.
120. There has been an increase in federal register notices showing that there are more institutions finalizing their inventories, and inventories are a part of the NAGPRA repatriation process when you're working with ancestors and their associated burial belongings.
121. So those types of items and ancestors are put in an inventory and that inventory is developed in consultation
122. in a collaborative consultation environment with Native nations so that the institution
123. or federal agency is consulting either face-to-face or in good faith to bring those ancestors
124. and items home. Another part of NAGPRA repatriation is the summary process, and the summary process
125. is less onerous than the inventory process, but it applies to items including unassociated
126. burial belongings, sacred objects, and objects of cultural patrimony. Those items are included
127. in a summary in which the institutions share with the National NAGPRA program within the National
128. Park Service of the Department of Interior and also shared with potentially affiliated Native
129. Nations to then move to that coordinated collaboration with Native Nations for the
130. repatriation process. It's a bit technical. The NAGPRA regulations are a bit technical,
131. but they're easy to follow.
132. They're put in a step-by-step process so that the institutions can easily comply
133. so that even the format of the NAGPRA regulations have changed
134. to make it easier for institutions to comply.
135. Thank you very much because it's a very, the ebb and flow,
136. this whole NAGPRA is very difficult to keep up with,
137. and I appreciate you summarizing for our listeners.
138. Now, one of the things, the inventory and the calculations as far as taking in inventory
139. and especially under-associated berry items is very, very controversial in the South.
140. Before I get to the next questions about the successes of it,
141. touch upon the argument and you probably have the experience as far as the science community in
142. NACPRA. Here in California has been a very much of an uproar about how the anthropological or
143. anthropologist and science have been very much not very friendly to NACPRA. Some yes, some no.
144. So tell us about this argument with the scientists, especially this notion of NAGPRA and the religious connotations of that.
145. Please talk to us.
146. So anthropology and archaeology are both part of Western academia and Western science that has grown because the United States has allowed them to free access to our bodies and cultural heritage without our free prior and informed consent.
147. And when Western science does that, they seem to do so in a very arrogant way in which they make their own determinations about the people and the objects that come from those people without any input from the people themselves.
148. And so much of history and academia about Native peoples and who we are is frankly wrong
149. or misdirected and misconstrued especially by non authors because those authors haven included Native people as part of their exploration and their investigation and really they part of the scientific
150. theoretical practice, right?
151. So what they've perpetuated is a very stereotypical point of view of who native people are.
152. I mean, there is a reason why what people know about Native people is this kind of stuck-in-time stereotype.
153. This picture of a Native person in headdress on a horse in front of a teepee
154. and other kind of similar stereotypical images of Native people are the result of Western science and U.S. policy.
155. And this stereotypical imagination of who Native people are have left us invisible to everyone.
156. So we've had to come into power and take control of our own cultural heritage and our own narratives to fight back against these stereotypes and to fight back against poor policy that's being developed out of these stereotypes.
157. So we have more and more native archaeologists and anthropologists today who are retelling the stories of their people and are taking back control of that narrative and sharing through their tribal museums.
158. There's about 150 tribal museums across the United States.
159. In fact, the Association on American Indian Affairs has a wonderful website devoted, webpage devoted to tribal museums because we celebrate Tribal Museums Day the first Saturday of every December.
160. So we try to help promote people going to tribal museums so they can learn the truth from the truth tellers about their own culture and heritage.
161. We also tried to prevent people from purchasing our cultural heritage at auction and from dealers.
162. This type of activity is going on, and it seems like it would be a violation of NAGPRA, because NAGPRA requires repatriation of those same types of items that are being sold by many dealers and consignors at auction houses.
163. Unfortunately, though, Congress created a great law in NAGPRA, a great human rights law.
164. They didn't provide a remedy when these cultural items and ancestors are in the hands of private collectors.
165. So even though there is a plethora of other laws that control theft and whether it's OK to steal something without permission
166. and other federal laws regarding theft from an Indian nation.
167. There's also state laws that can apply.
168. Generally, archaeologists, anthropologists, auction house owners, dealers,
169. they ignore that.
170. They even ignore tribal laws that protect their own cultural heritage.
171. So they can continue to commercialize and profit off of the sale of our cultural heritage.
172. So what does all this mean?
173. when all of our cultural heritage is in the hands of non-natives, it prevents us from
174. really bringing our religions and cultures and customs and traditions back to our people And when we able to repatriate these items quite often nations involve their entire communities so that they can lovingly bring these things and what they represent back to their nation
175. healing, you know, providing an opportunity to pass down intergenerational healing instead of intergenerational trauma,
176. which has been the result of all this theft and taking and insecurity that U.S. policy and archaeologists have created, right?
177. Thank you, Sandra, for that.
178. But, well, once you take us through the journey of some success stories, for example, at NACPRA,
179. I've been involved with repatriations, and I can't talk about some of the success stories,
180. but maybe you can in a national sense and a sense of your experience.
181. There's been a lot of breakthroughs.
182. Talk to us about that, please.
183. Success with repatriation is at many levels. So NAGPRA can showcase so many successes. And those successes, I want to be clear, are not just successes for Native nations in bringing back their culture.
184. But we've also seen successes in the building of relationships between Native nations and institutions where there had been none before and where those institutions have developed new educational opportunities for the public in collaboration with those Native nations.
185. So the education is appropriate.
186. It's being led and directed by Native peoples,
187. and it is a lot more interactive than an item behind glass with a label
188. that does nothing to really educate people about who Native nations are today.
189. So some of the successes, we also have to look at those non-Native institutions
190. who have learned how to better work with and exhibit and expose the public
191. to important Native Nation issues and policies.
192. So other successes, they're so hard to talk about because many of the successes
193. that Native Nations have with repatriation are also very personal, sacred, and confidential.
194. And so I don't often share those stories from Native nations and their successes in repatriation because I believe those are their stories to tell unless they give me permission to do so.
195. So I want to go directly to some public information that anyone can access and learn more about some of the NAGPRA successes and some of the difficulties.
196. And there is a comic book series called, I think, the NAGPRA comic book.
197. and in the NAGPRA comic book, it's this great picture and text
198. that takes you through the NAGPRA process with some institutions
199. to share how NAGPRA works and what those successes look like.
200. For example, in the very first volume of the NAGPRA comic books,
201. there's a story about Harvard, Harvard Peabody,
202. and the difficulty of getting ancestors repatriated from them
203. and that Harvard wouldn't cultivate
204. truly affiliate many ancestors with nations who are now in the state of Michigan.
205. And so what happened is that those ancestors were repatriated through this other complex
206. process in NAGPRA that no longer exists in the new regulations, but it was called the
207. disposition process in which the tribe had to actually ask the Secretary of Interior
208. for disposition of those ancestors because the institution would not declare that they were
209. affiliated with the people. And we want to remind listeners you're listening to American Indian
210. Airwaves. We're speaking with Shannon O'Loughlin, a citizen of the Choctaw Nation of Oklahoma
211. and serves the Association on American Indian Affairs as its chief executive and attorney.
212. She's speaking on the Native American Graves Protection and Repatriation Act
213. its modifications and the expansion of the non-renewable resource extractive industries
214. operations into the ocean and what does that mean for indigenous peoples traditional territories
215. sacred sites ancestors and other forms of cultural patrimony as these mining operations
216. continue to expand and now back to the interview so they did get those ancestors returned but the
217. institution then would not return their funerary belongings with those ancestors.
218. So those Michigan nations had to remake each and every one of those cultural items so that
219. they could rebury those ancestors.
220. And it wasn't until years later when the Association on American Indian Affairs was
221. educating people about the failure at Harvard Peabody in NAGPRA, where Harvard actually
222. changed their protocol about returning those funerary objects, and they ended up returning
223. them back. Of course, that was after those nations' efforts to have to, you know, remake
224. all of those cultural heritage items. And so now they're left with like, okay, now how do we return
225. these items where we've already closed their graves, right? So, you know, there can be success
226. mixed with difficulty, right? And through the NAGPRA process, we see many institutions and
227. tribes really going through a relationship building process, and it's often dependent on
228. the people at any particular institution and how they will move forward, whether they'll move
229. forward in a positive way or whether they're going to cause problems. There are a few
230. enforcement mechanisms within NAGPRA, including going to federal court, but there's also alternative
231. dispute resolution through the NAGPRA Review Committee, and there's also a civil penalty
232. process where institutions are not complying with NAGPRA. So there are a few opportunities
233. that Native nations and others can use to help enforce and support repatriation.
234. Thank you for that rich historical knowledge about the history of NAGPRA to the modification
235. of the NAGPRA regulations and some of those successes, right? Because implementation of
236. NAGPRA is always shall we say frustrating to put it overly diplomatically And I know Marcus and I could talk about other cases you know where NAGPRA it a struggle to see NAGPRA implemented But I know you know in reaching out to you
237. we wanted to talk about, you know, with this big push with the so-called green economy,
238. you know, we're seeing this massive expansion of mining of rare minerals.
239. and part of the mining of rare minerals, not just in land in which a disproportionate amount of
240. these rare minerals that are used in the green economy are within 35 miles of Native American
241. nations, but also we're seeing the rise of ocean mining and indigenous peoples throughout Turtle
242. Island or Mother Earth have creation stories and have their own stories of times when the ocean
243. water levels were much lower. And so people's traditional homelands far extend beyond what we
244. think of today, the ocean shorelines. And so there's certainly the issue with this generation
245. of the climate crisis and how that's impacting indigenous people's traditional homelands along
246. on the coastline and those sacred sites.
247. But what about sacred sites off the coastlines?
248. And what does that mean with the rise of ocean mining
249. and the implementation of NAGPRA?
250. And so I was wondering if you could maybe touch on that.
251. And what are you seeing so far?
252. Thanks for that question.
253. It's a really great question.
254. Let's first talk about NAGPRA and deep sea mining.
255. So I'm not aware, though I could be wrong, of any Native nation who has jurisdiction within ocean boundaries, so past the coastline.
256. I'm just not aware of any Native nation who has recognized tribal lands that would be part of an ocean environment.
257. So NAGPRA Graves Protection Provisions, which is subpart B in the regulations, oversees only cultural heritage items that are within the land that is tribal lands or federal lands.
258. So what I'm assuming the ocean lands jurisdiction question is, is that these lands are federal.
259. So if they're not state, they're likely federal.
260. And if they're federal lands, then NAGPRO would apply and require the federal government to consult with Native nations about the cultural heritage before excavated.
261. or if there happens to be an inadvertent excavation that uncovers cultural heritage on federal lands in the ocean,
262. then that federal agency would be required to consult with Native nations.
263. But that doesn't mean that cultural heritage and those ancestors won't be dug up and repatriated,
264. is what generally happens under NAGPRA when we're looking at federal land.
265. So NAGPRA can apply in that way.
266. Another federal law that will likely apply and can apply to state jurisdictions
267. where there's federal involvement or a federal undertaking
268. is the National Historic Preservation Act there it would be similar to NAGPRA so that if the federal government was involved there would have to be tribal consultation But that doesn mean that the
269. site will actually be protected and left alone. So generally, there is no U.S. federal law that
270. would prevent the destruction of any native cultural heritage. What our federal laws provide
271. for is simply a consultation requirement, which is under federal law. Interpretation is just a
272. procedural requirement. It's a box check that the developer, that the federal government has to do
273. so they can move a project forward. And we've seen that happen time and time again on terra firma.
274. Right. So it's more than likely that that type of behavior is going to continue.
275. On top of that, we also have, you know, the White House's executive order unleashing America's offshore critical minerals and resources,
276. which came out on April 24, 2025, and it seems to just kind of treat our ocean and undersea resources
277. similar to how the current administration is treating our terra firma resources
278. so that there is a closing down of regulation and oversight.
279. There's a closing down of requirements to consult because the administration is declaring it an energy emergency so that they can bypass those requirements of even consultation with Native Nations.
280. So I am really, really concerned that cultural heritage and our ancestors will not be protected under this administration and that a defensive posture of education with the federal government is not going to be successful and that we are going to have to be offensive.
281. as many other organizations and interests are right now.
282. They're suing the administration in order to protect rights,
283. and we've seen that to really be the only thing that's working right now.
284. That and protest and being a strong voice out there.
285. Thank you.
286. Thank you, Shannon.
287. On that note, we wanted to – this executive order by the president of the administration
288. It affects a lot of areas, NOAA, for example, and permits of companies to mine in U.S. and international waters, and also environmental concerns, and also the critical materials.
289. We're talking about magnesium, nickel, cobalt, and rare earth elements that use the various technologies and defense systems.
290. and people got to be aware of that, that this affects many Native nations
291. because many Native nations are ocean people.
292. They don't just rely on the land.
293. They're ocean people.
294. In fact, Hawaii has just passed, it prevents seabed mining.
295. And so what you were talking about earlier about this America stuck in time
296. or this stereotypical imagination of where we are,
297. it doesn't just end with a particular legislation,
298. but people like yourself a better understanding where we at this point in time That being said talk about you might say some of the challenges You mentioned a little bit about terra firma Now what does that mean
299. for our public? And is that something, a new terminology or a terminology in which affects
300. a lot of people within land and especially on the ocean? Talk about that for a second.
301. Yeah, and I'm just using the word terra firma to distinguish between land, dry land, versus underwater, underwater resources, underwater cultural heritage.
302. So it's not a legal term of art or anything like that.
303. It's just me distinguishing between the two.
304. I know that the United States has some law, domestic law.
305. I know that the United States is not participating and hasn't participated in the UN Convention on the Law of the Sea, that the U.S. has its own domestic law and follows its own federal law.
306. The law regarding undersea resources is not really much different than the law that applies to terra firma or resources on the land or within the land.
307. Though I don't call cultural heritage a resource, it is something much bigger and different than a resource. So I'm not quite sure how else to answer your question there.
308. Well, I think you answered part of it, and the UN Convention on the Law on the Sea, the United States hasn't ratified it, but we can see that culturally, especially in the Hawaiian and some of the other cultures, Miwok and also Chumash and the sea, very much tied to the waters.
309. and that this discussion is very important to that, too.
310. A heads up on those cultural and those indigenous nations
311. that this idea that you proposed
312. and that you're talking about this new free prior informed consent
313. is a very important element within that.
314. Talk about how it might, maybe you can or cannot,
315. talk about how this free prior informed consent
316. consent applies to a lot of indigenous nations and the underwater mining.
317. There are many native nations that are connected to the ocean and have stories going back for
318. millennia about their relationship with water and the ocean and that water level change
319. has meant that much of our heritage is also now underwater,
320. and the activities of underwater mining, of oceanic mining,
321. are maybe even more damaging to our ecosystems
322. than that same drilling that happens on land.
323. And part of the reason, and I'm learning this about the Shinnecock Nation.
324. So the Shinnecock Nation in New York does have subsistence muscles that they farm and use and sell and eat.
325. They also use other oceanic resources as part of their traditional fishing and gathering and have
326. relationships in those ecosystems. And when I talk about ecosystem relationships, I mean,
327. all of the things swimming around in the ocean are our relatives. And we have an obligation
328. to protect as they have the same obligation to also protect us. So when corporations are doing
329. undersea mining, what often happens, especially if you think about the East Coast, New York,
330. New Jersey and around that area is that you are swishing around all this old pollution that has
331. settled. And we want to remind listeners you're listening to American Indian Airwaves. We're
332. speaking with Shannon O'Loughlin, a citizen of the Choctaw Nation of Oklahoma and serves the
333. Association on American Indian Affairs as its chief executive and attorney. She's speaking on
334. the Native American Graves Protection and Repatriation Act, its modifications, and the
335. expansion of the non-renewable resource extractive industries operations into the ocean. And what
336. does that mean for indigenous peoples, traditional territories, sacred sites, ancestors, and other
337. forms of cultural patrimony as these mining operations continue to expand? And now back to
338. the interview. So if you're digging in the soil in the ocean, you're disturbing a lot of old,
339. horrible pollution from the 40s and 50s and 60s and 70s before the environmental rights movement
340. of the 70s happened and there became some environmental regulations, right? We've got
341. to remember that the reason why we have environmental regulations is because we had
342. rivers on fire because there was so much pollution in our water sources, among other things, right?
343. So doing any kind of digging or disturbance is going to disturb all that old pollution,
344. and it's going to make our ecosystems and life for all of the things that live in the water
345. impossible. So by committing to this offshore drilling and other mining and activities that
346. they do to dig and put these pipes in there will have a devastating effect on all of us. So this is
347. not just a native issue. This is a huge environmental issue and environmental impacts.
348. These are difficult questions at our time because this is just like the beginning of NAGPRA.
349. These critical materials and also deep-sea mining talk about our seabed nodules.
350. You know, as far as many of the Hawaiian culture, let's say even of our cultures within California,
351. is that the deep-sea mining and these nodules and that this environment of concerns over these factories
352. factories that go in the deep sea of our oceans that affect not only life forms, which is
353. we say our relatives, but yet are these nodules that are effective and that are extracted
354. there from the bottom and where culturally we see those as our relatives.
355. And so one of the things that not only the outer coast of the continental United States
356. or Turtle Island, but yet this picture of deep sea mining has a religious connotations,
357. much like a lot of the religious connotations and I use religion in quotes because there much more than that but there religious connotations as far as the relatives within
358. for example, the protection of Mount Okea.
359. It's not just a volcano on the telescope, but just protection of the culture in that
360. sacred area.
361. Talk about the sacredness of what that means to Native people in your experiences, and
362. And what is the sacred sites have to do with deep sea mining in your view and also the
363. sea bed nodules from your experience or maybe from your readings about our ocean nations,
364. indigenous nations as we speak today?
365. Yeah, talking about what sacred, sacred sites and sacredness is difficult to talk about
366. and can be highly personal and confidential for many Native nations.
367. And many Native nations struggle with determining how best to share
368. about these very sacred, confidential things
369. so that they can protect those sacred places.
370. So something is sacred and many native cultures, it's my understanding, believe that everything is sacred.
371. everything has an energy, has a life, that there is no such thing as an inanimate object,
372. that everything has breath, everything has life, everything has energy,
373. and that each one of us must respect that.
374. On top of that, there are certain places and areas throughout the United States,
375. underwater everywhere throughout our world that hold deeply special meaning
376. and have special energy, events associated with that spot,
377. and were places that many native stories talk about,
378. that the creator gave that nation, gave those people the special right to be the protectors of that area.
379. Because it's sacred.
380. And because our lives are dependent on the health and security and safety of that place.
381. So it's like a codependent that declaring something sacred is also kind of declaring a codependent relationship.
382. And I don't mean that in a negative way.
383. That codependent relationship is how all of us survive on everything that comes from the earth that we require is part of our sacred environment.
384. and we all must protect that for our own survival
385. and I think that's one of the difficulties we're having
386. in this world we're living in today
387. is that we have these people in power
388. that are only interested in paper money
389. where most of us are interested in having clean air,
390. clean water a healthy life and activity and community that worthwhile And we can have that if we know how to protect our sacred places if we know how to protect
391. and leave alone or work with improving technologies to lessen the impact of extraction or find
392. other sources where we can live a happy, healthy life.
393. But the mining and extractive industry that happens today is, you know, beyond those needs
394. of our lives and are filling the pockets of the top 1% in this world.
395. It has nothing to do.
396. They don't care. I'm going off the rails here. Somebody stop me. I don't know what to talk.
397. But the idea, it's really hard to talk about what is sacred, right?
398. It's really hard to talk about what is sacred and so meaningful.
399. and because we're also as a people really distracted.
400. We're really distracted and don't often recognize what's underneath our feet.
401. Now many of the indigenous nations and medicine people
402. and spiritual people out there, indigenous nations
403. and throughout the Turtle Island and throughout our canoe cousins,
404. for example, in Northwest or Maoris or Australia or Kanaka Maoris, like I said before, many other
405. peoples up and down the continent, if you will, that hold on to or holding on to traditional
406. indigenous knowledge like you expressed. And I think that's a new and old discussion we need
407. to the powers that be, but at the same time,
408. your last words to our listeners as far as what do we see in your future?
409. It's going to be a difficult next three years.
410. Hopefully it won't last that long.
411. Hopefully it will not last any longer.
412. But my big concern is that we are going to lose precious, sacred places, not just in the United States, but off of our waters and into our beautiful oceans.
413. So the direction of our current government is not favorable to protecting our cultural heritage and sacred places.
414. So I do hope that many of us who are doing this work can come together in a lively and energetic way and better understand where all of our quote-unquote lawyers, guns, and money are.
415. and I'm not trying to instill violence, but I want us, we all need to understand
416. what resources we have, what capacity we have to get on the ground and protect these sacred places
417. that it needs all of us to participate. We can participate on the ground. We can call
418. congress people we can write letters we can get good media and investigative journalism involved That does still exist right So we can all come together and I think if we can do what happening in other places that are fighting similar ills that we can be successful
419. But my big worry is that we're going to lose land resources under this current regime.
420. The moment of silence is over.
421. and that was shannon o'laughlin a citizen of the choctaw nation of oklahoma and serves as the
422. association on american indian affairs as its chief executive and attorney we've been speaking
423. on the history of the native american graves protection and repatriation act its recent
424. modifications in 2024 and the expansion of the non-renewable resource extractive industries
425. into the oceans and its potential impact on Native American traditional homelands that are
426. presently under the ocean shorelines. And that concludes our show for today here on American
427. Indian Airwaves. A special thank you to our guest for the hour, Shannon O'Loughlin. For more
428. information on the Association on American Indian Affairs, you can visit their website
429. at www.indian-affairs.org. A special thank you to our musical guests for the hour,
430. Aragon Star, Koopa Aina, and the band Blackfire. American Indian Airwaves is mixed and mastered in
431. the studios of Burnt Swamp Studios in Signal Hill, California. For Marcus Lopez, I've been
432. your host for the hour, Larry Smith.
433. Until next time.
434. There's a truth that must be heard.
435. After all the lies and the empty promises
436. We take a stand on the land that you tried to bury us
437. For all the pain and all the suffering
438. We take a stand
439. We take a stand
440. We sleep caged against our fears
441. Try not to become what we've endured
442. Wearing our...
443. You're invited to tune in to The QR Code
444. with your hosts, Ramses Jha and Q Ward.
445. The Q in The QR Code goes by the name of Q Ward.
446. The voice you just heard is the R in The QR Code.
447. He goes by the name Ramses Jha.
448. Every Monday through Thursday at 6 a.m.
449. Be sure to join us next time as we share our news
450. with our voice from our perspective.
451. And until then, peace.
452. Peace.
453. Will Gear Theatricum Botanicum returns this June 6th through October 4th
454. with outdoor repertory theater, events, and educational programs for all ages.
455. A Midsummer Night's Dream is back.
456. Alongside Romeo and Juliet, Treasure Island, Noel Coward's Waiting in the Wings,
457. and Bernardo Cubrilla's dark and incisive new comedy, The People of Pompeii,
458. set in the aftermath of the 2025 Palisades fire.
459. Theatricum is located in Topanga Canyon,
460. just off the 101 freeway in the shade of the Tampere River.
461. of the California Live Oaks.
462. Explore and picnic in the