The dayton society of natural history proposes a nagpra consultation and documentation project to build acommunity of stakeholders including tribal nations, expert consultants, and peer mentors…

The dayton society of natural history proposes a nagpra consultation and documentation project to build acommunity of stakeholders including tribal nations, expert consultants, and peer mentors working toward culturalcontinuity and respect with relation to sunwatch village in dayton, ohio. This project includes a thoroughliterature review of current scholarly information with expert input, presentations by tribal nations, andmeaningful consultation with tribal nations to determine cultural affiliation to the best of our abilities. Thenext steps will be to work with this coalition of tribes to determine control, treatment, and repatriation ofnagpra cultural items and ancestors related to sunwatch. The three primary goals of the proposed project are 1) ensure every tribe that may have an interest in sunwatchhas a reasonable opportunity to join the conversation, 2) determine cultural affiliation, and 3) increase staffknowledge of nagpra-related topics. These goals will improve the abilities of the dsnh and of partnering tribalnations to facilitate consultations and collaboration in carrying out the nagpra process. We will use thefollowing activities to accomplish these goals: research and data collection to determine cultural affiliation, training for dsnh staff with nagpra-focused workshops, travel for tribal representatives and or dsnh staff(according to tribal requests) to conduct in-person consultation activities and visit sunwatch, intertribalmeetings, and collections care activities as directed by tribal consultation. We will also reevaluate our existing catalog records without conducting any new research of those objects andupdate information as required by the new nagpra ruling. Our goal is to make sure the collection is ready fortribal review. We plan to have a database available to tribes with all nagpra objects with information such asobject name, plot of origin provenience, provenance, and photographs.project partners include the miami tribe of oklahoma, pre-contact ohio scholars DRS. David pollack and gwynnhenderson, tribal advisor and nagpra consultant stacey halfmoon (caddo, choctaw, delaware), local consultant stephanie van hoose (mohawk BAY of quinte) from reach indigenous advocacy, peer mentors fort ticonderoga and cincinnati museum center, and the wright state university asian and native american center. In addition to these partners, we have also had preliminary conversations with 12 other tribes: shawnee tribe, SAC and FOX nation of oklahoma, ponca tribe of oklahoma, pokagon band of potawatomi indians, match-E-be-nash-she-wish band of potawatomi indians, seneca nation, fond DU LAC band of lake superior chippewa, and nottawaseppi huron band of the potawatomi. In the coming weeks, we will also welcome representatives from the absentee shawnee tribe to sunwatch for an on-site visit. Our institutional nagpra priority is repatriation of all ancestral remains and nagpra items as well as a fullevaluation of all native american objects in our collection to make sure that no nagpra items are left off thelist. In order to get to that point, the biggest focus now and moving forward is building and maintainingrelationships with tribes and understanding cultural affiliation. We are striving to do more than repatriation, including creating meaningful and long-lasting connections that will continue to thrive long after repatriationis complete. Ultimately, we want to create a welcoming environment for indigenous partners to view ourcollections and make requests for repatriation with confidence. During this project, we expect to accomplish thefollowing outcomes: understand cultural affiliation for collections and ancestral remains related to sunwatchand summarize in a concise report, develop organizational guidelines for treatment of nagpra cultural items andancestral remains and consultation processes, demonstrate increased staff knowledge with data analysis of pre post assessments.