Another aspect of the demand for US public dominion appears under the guise of science. Despite the passage in 1990 of the Native American Graves Protection and Repatriation Act (NAGPRA), some researchers under the cloak of science have fought tooth and nail not to release the remains and burial offerings of some two million Indigenous people held in storage, much of it uncataloged, in the Smithsonian Institution and other museums and by universities, state historical societies, National Park Service offices, warehouses, and curio shops. Until the 1990s, archaeologists and physical anthropologists claimed to need the remains—which they labeled “resources” or “data,” but rarely as “human remains”—for “scientific” experimentation, but most were randomly stored in boxes.

Roxanne Dunbar-Ortiz, An Indigenous Peoples' Hist…, loc. 507435