committee on natural resources will come to order please this morning we meet to hear about the administration's goals for the native american grazing protection and repatriation act or n and to explore possible improvements to the implementation the program press sets up a process for the identification and repatriation of certain human remains funerary objects sacred objects in objects of cultural patrimony of indian tribes and native hawaiian organizations the human remains that are at issue are the ancestors of native americans many of them warriors killed in battle they deserve the same respect that we give to human remains of our warriors of today the actor directed museums and federal agencies to complete an inventory of their culturally affiliated human remains and funerary objects and submit that in bad november of one thousand nine hundred five the publication in the federal register almost fifteen years later the administration is still publishing these inventories recently the mouse trap and the national association of travel historic preservation officers conducted a study of the implementation of nagpur following a recommendation of their report senator dorgan and i requested the g a o study on federal agency compliance with as well as how appropriated funds are being used as this study is underway we will not be looking into these issues today we will however be looking at the administration a national and act for a program by the national park service this will include examination the data being collected the systems in place and the tools available to measure the success of the knack for a program based on the issues that i expect to come up today we will need to ask ourselves if this program is receiving the attention that it deserves now i hope today's hearing will serve as an end impetus to improve the program with that i do look forward to hearing about the ministrations goals for nagra and how this committee can help ensure  program among those joining us this morning the deputy director of the national park service for the past several months has been performing extra duty sermon is acting director of the park hundred it is most important for museums and federal agencies to repatriate human remains found on federal or indian lands in a respectful and dignified manner to the families or tribes to whom they are known to be related to notwithstanding how serious this work is ensuring the law is carried out appropriately and efficiently and with an eye on the application of cells science to identify remains and culture objects correctly should be some of our chief goals so  first panel on you have the stage all to yourself we do have your prepared testimony it will be made part of the record as it actually read and thank you mr chairman for this opportunity to appear before this committee of interior had responsibility for the administration of the act was passed in one thousand nine hundred in two thousand in order to better concentrate our efforts and serve the naked community constituents the national program was separated from the national park service in two thousand and four both programs are separate from the national park service archaeology program the national park service program is located in denver near many of the national park service program operates as an omnibus program to facilitate the notices of publication of all federal agencies and museum the national program maintains databases of the compliance documents submitted in the next process summar applications in fiscal year two thousand and nine in fiscal year two thousand and nine two hundred notices were published eight hundred the number of notices published in two thousand and four out of a total of two thousand notices published in bring if there is a complaint about compliance regarding the museum an allegation of a civil penalty may be sent to the m p s director using the template provided in the national nature website the complaint will be investigated by national  about any impact or role that for has in protecting newly discovered objects not just collections that are already in museum or federal agency collections and what you think the national park service is a role in protecting to identify and repatriate human remains from across the united states yes recently we submitted a proposal to the department of the interior with some of the issues that we have currently we know of could be repatriated we have recently been made aware that a large number of pending draft notices to be published in the federal register were pulled without consultation we would like to know who was responsible for pulling these notices and why they were pulled for well over a century burials and cemeteries containing human remains and funerary sacred objects and objects of culture patrimony have been subjected to leading intellect even today there are numerous websites around on the internet that will buy sale and trade cattle scenery objects there are also private museums that house and oftentimes by sale in trade carol funerary objects thousand and one twenty one cattle funerary vessels were stolen from the texas are logical research laboratory at the university of texas in austin at ten million dollars i'm sorry a ten thousand dollars reward went out and the objects cattle they receive their funding through a variety of means to investors universities loans and local banks donations and grants using the cattle collections that they have as leverage many of the repository for cattle human remains objects our house will continue to receive funding for research projects related to these collections to create educational tools for the general public yet our own cattle museum has only one small exhibit space one full time employee of not and have worked with us and in good faith to repay items in the most appropriate expedient manner most museums have acknowledged that they should never have held these objects in the first place maximum that they were at a party to wrong doing such an admission will help the holy who are wrong so many years ago it provides a measure of peace of mind to the apach today has accomplished a great deal over the past nineteen years extensive repatriation of human remains and other cultural from both museum collections and from recent excavation has occurred and it continues to occur here much over the disposition of their ancestral remains and important cultural items were reasonably traceable relationship to an earlier group can be established where such a relationship has not yet been established the law enables the search for cultural affiliation legislative legislative history as well of the law in recent years however the society has had and has expressed growing concern about imbalance in certain areas of the law's implementation for instance in the poe's rule drafted by the national office relating to disposition options for culturally and identifiable human remains the proposed regulations suggest that a quick and complete removal of human remains from curatorial institution is more important than allowing time for the parties to continue working together to knowledge and understanding about relationships of shared identity support processes that allow parties time and flexibility to work together without the pressure of arbitrary deadlines as they develop knowledge about cultural connections and develop options for caring for human remains and cultural objects that have been removed from their places of origin issues such as the need today to our words i am calling and testifying before the house resources as a private citizen i served on the committee for years and i recently cycled off that committee is an incredibly complex and technical piece of legislation that was constructed around a very simple human ideal to respect the human rights of native people to possess and care for the remains and cultural property of their ancestors it was intended to change the status quo the status quo of where human remains and cultural property belonging to native people sat on shelves sat on set in boxes and basically were not in the possession and care of the people who own them this process is extremely complex and technical it is a process that will not move forward unless their capacity to change the status quo in my comments that i have written i have pointed out to  i think that the place we need to begin these conversations is to ask what it is that the native people need to be able to make this process work because if the process doesn't work for them then the harm continues unabated and so what i believe we need which has been already mentioned to you on this committee is we need resources we need to build the capacity but as we build that capacity we need to be sure that the capacity that we build is aligned to the people that we're trying to serve and in this case the people that we're trying to serve are the native people i have in my testimony listed a series of things that are recommendations that i think can be done i would expect that these changes would be done in such a way that they would be aligned and of relevance to the people that we're trying to assist that is native american capacity also needs to be built for museums and federal institution and there is now ongoing my understanding of government accountability report that will address there's a second point that i'd like to make and that is this we have yet to define what success looks like under this program and if you have not defined success then how is it you will know when you have arrived there i believe that what we need is a clear metric of what success means so that all will be able to judge their performance against it once you have a clear metric what then happens is that the agencies responsible for implementing negra will have a benchmark against which they will be measured and when you at your discretion have oversight hearings you will have a way to measure whether they're making progress presently there is no metric presently the system is one that is not working well finally the third point i'd like to make about the review committee the review committee has a number of responsibilities that range from fact finding to what i consider policy recommendation making that is a huge set of functions and to my way of thinking the nagpur review committee simply does not have the time or the resources to do the work to which it has been assigned for example at most of our meetings when we show up for the meeting we have binders that are double sided and we have two days to go through our agenda and what this people there would be no individual ownership of these items that were taken from the petty people long ago and hundreds a lot of them were taken in the late one nine hundred by the us calvary or by missionaries that sacred ceremony for the petty people and we feel that the items were not taken them properly and in order to give them their full respect and to help correct wrongdoing we think that possibility of achieving cultural affiliation has been accomplished before a resolution comes to pass on those that truly are and identifiable as opposed presently identified and my understanding descendants and their opportunity to take care of their ancestors and that are not the reason why they fail to have that opportunity well i look forward to look forward to what i will tell you is that if i'm going to give you that answer i will have to look at my materials and give it to you and i want to make a point here what i want to make is that this is extremely complicated i never work in the negra field without consulting the rules and i do this because my memory the system does not make inherent sense to most people and so and so i'm going to i think demonstrate my ignorance before this committee as an attorney as a former judge and as a former staffer of the senate committee on indian affairs because this is extremely complicated i never you know i would look it up for you and i know i can give you the correct answer but rather than do that in this situation i'm not going to and the complexity of this law is a point that i want to emphasize because it is so complex because it is so technical it renders it impossible for the people who we want to serve and that the people that we want to serve in this case are the people who are harmed by the status quo there difficulty understanding this process is one of the issues that this committee needs to address and if i might go on just for one one a few seconds more in the training that's offered in the way that we operate it  needs to be aligned to the people we are trying to i have one example to offer and it is probably not the best there is an organization that has recently been hired to do the training for the national  past federal agents to report in such a way in an understandable way clear way that the message gets out to people across the country now that is extremely difficult i think what you really need is you need to improve the database that you now have online and i what i mean here that it needs to not only be really high tech but it also has to be high touch in the sense that people understand it in the sense that it is accessible in the sense that you and your staff could go online right now and find out where remains are they are in an institution across the country i challenge all of you to go on to that website and to figure out whether or not buying if you were a detective whether you could find where those remains are and so that's why i say this is a capacity problem it's a it's a technology problem it's a training problem and as i said it is about building relationships if i might just one more one more part of this conversation to have a metric to measure whether or not the capacity that you're building is actually being built you need to have a metric to understand whether or not those relationships are being improved you need to have a metric to measure whether or not that is working for the people who have to remember this we don't change the status quo the remains and the sacred items and the cultural items and the funerary objects and the items of cultural patrimony where they are so this is a question not only about funding it's a question about coming up with a metric it's a question about management it's a question about building a better system and it's a done a good job because they decided for us because we were in the right at any rate i think that mr cohen kippen indicated he was a former committee member and he said that two days before the hearing he would get a big binder material to go through and not get adequate time to really review the material find out the issues involved and i think that talks about  committee members what i would recommend is that there be more perhaps double the committee members and maybe have the committee members in regional take care of regional issues for example states northeast united states northwest united states because there are so many tribes in hawaii included that all the issues are different among the tribes so that you can have experts from regional areas that will address those web materials available i think that in certainly in the last five years as i've watched things unfold there's been an increasing access and transparency to certain information which has been wonderful on the databases for example  i think some of our concern is about understanding how decisions are made whether it's decisions about assessing nominations for the review committee and selection process or whether it's decisions your committee's recommendations it's my understanding that has been supportive of those recommendations and particularly the idea of a regional solution and working rather than trying to come up with a single one size fits all solution my recollection is that the review committee advocated for more customized regional discussions to come up with proposed solutions and certainly  my opinion is that the state of the data could be much improved i also think that the accessibility to the data the understandability of the data could be much improved and the reason i think data is absolutely crucial is because we want we want as a best practice to make decisions based on data and information and when we make decisions we want to base those decisions upon accurate data and information so if you don't have accurate data or if you don't have data or if you can't access the data then you really don't know what it is how you're doing and i think that's absolutely crucial it's crucial i think for this committee because you're sitting at thirty thousand feet trying to look down and understand what it is you can do to make this work better you have the staff at the national negra who are actually on the ground but what we need is we need that intermediate piece where we have a set of clear goals clear metrics which will help you to do your work and will help them as well so that when they come and report to you on i hope a frequent basis that when they do report that you're able to they're making progress on these issues having to do with accessibility to information on issues having to do with their their knowledge and their capacity to work the process on the museums and the federal agencies understanding of the process and how they're doing with respect to their collection and the items and the remains that they're holding so the whole system is dependent upon data and i think the way that you make it all work is to be clear at a higher level about what it is we're going to measure them again because really what gets measured is what gets done so you need a measure now i want to add one thing there is a measure that i know has been addressed that was addressed by mr wang when he testified it was also addressed by some of the people on the committee on this panel and that was and i'll tell you what the metric was the number of inventories in the backlog that was a metric high number of of of big backlog before now we have a little backlog well there are a number of strategies that one could implement to take the backlog from a big backlog to backlog i'm not i'm not really clear what that strategy was but i do know that notices were sent back notices were sent back and not published by the national office and in my opinion that is not a strategy that works i would say that if you're going to be sending back notices to be able to reduce your backlog an inquiry into that and i think and i will assume that  that was what your office has been attempting to do to understand how we went from big backlog to little backlog and what was the process by which we got there i will say that some of the members  would just like to again say that i think that the issues that face the implementation of this act are systemic and that you need to have a systemic approach to hard you're going to address them and to the extent that we are clear in what those what those benchmarks are what those measures are what those metrics are i think we could improve it and i think it will greatly improve your ability as an oversight committee to get the kinds of answers you need to be able to make better the other thing i want to say is i want to be absolutely clear that i think part of the objective in my coming today is to send a message to the administration that they need some time and energy and some resources into helping create systemic improvement and these metrics so that at the end of the day you will in all of us will be able to make sure that this act is moving forward thank you for your time for listening thank you and thank the witnesses for being with us today no further business the committee stands a