The 19th Meeting of the Native American Graves Protection and Repatriation Act Committee was held in Juneau, Alaska, from April 2-4, 2000. Concerns that have haunted the implementation of the Act appeared on the agenda again, invoking more pointed requests of the Department of the Interior and less belief in the ability of the legislation to elicit compliance.

The committee finished the draft recommendation on the disposition of so-called unaffiliated ancestral remains, however, the Rule which must be written in accord with the recommendation may take years to enact. An earlier solution to the repatriation of these relatives' remains came in the form of guidelines, leaving it up to agencies, museums and Native claimants to negotiate solutions, regionally when possible.

Addressing the long-standing dissatisfaction with the National Park Service as the committee's administering agency, inadequate funding, and lack of timely federal compliance with the law, the committee made the following recommendations, in part:

• Appropriation of $5 million in grants to Indian tribes, Native Hawaiian organizations and museums for FY 2001 and 2002

• Appropriation of an additional $400,000 in FY 2001 and 2002 to improve administration of the statute, especially for completion of inventory of culturally unidentifiable ancestral remains

• The placement of the NAGPRA administrative structure within the Secretariat of the Department of the Interior, rather than retaining it in the National Park Service, in order to address continuing concerns about administrative conflict of interest

• The renewed scrutiny of Federal agencies that have lagged far behind non-Federal museums in complying with NAGPRA, thus creating serious impediments to Indian tribes in their dealings with these agencies

The Committee recommended that Congress amend the statute to:

• Protect Native American graves on state or private lands from grave robbing and other forms of destruction

• Permit Indian tribes and Native Hawaiian organizations to carry out reburial of repatriated human remains on Federally managed lands from which those remains were originally taken

• Exempt sensitive cultural information from the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) when it involves material that is presented by an Indian tribe or Native Hawaiian organization solely for the purpose of documenting cultural affiliation or asserting a right to specific sacred objects or items of cultural patrimony

• Expand the Committee's purview to explicitly recognize its role in recommending the disposition of funerary objects associated with culturally unidentifiable human remains