Sacred Claims by Greg Johnson
The Native American Graves Protection and Repatriation Act (NAGPRA) of 1990 provides a legal framework within which Native Americans can seek the repatriation of human remains and certain categories of cultural objects--including sacred objects--from federally funded institutions. Although the repatriation movement among Native Americans has heretofore received scholarly attention specifically focused on this act, Sacred Claims is the first book to analyze the ways in which religious discourse is used to articulate repatriation claims. Greg Johnson takes this act as one instance in a larger context wherein native peoples around the globe must engage legal arenas in order to preserve their heritage. Methodologically, Sacred Claims is based on a close reading of government documents concerning the law and participant observation in a variety of NAGPRA-related events and provides the background and legislative history of the law, the life history of the act's axial term cultural affiliation (the most delicate and least understood aspect of NAGPRA), and several case studies of highly visible and contentious Hawaiian repatriation disputes. Johnson then moves beyond the strictly legal context to analyze NAGPRA discourse in the public realm. He concludes by way of a theoretical treatment of the foregoing issues, arguing that religious language was the chief means by which native representatives ultimately persuaded non-native audiences of the applicability of widely-held human rights principles to their cultural remains. Theorizing modes of cultural vitality in the repatriation context, Johnson argues that living tradition is not found in the objects themselves but is instead located in struggles over them. With the law on the brink of receiving crucial tests, and repatriation issues making daily headlines in Native American and Hawaiian news, Sacred Claims is a timely and necessary examination of these issues.-
Ordinarily Sacred
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The Value of Solitude
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Fundamentalisms
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Taking Responsibility
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Mission Implausible
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Cinema and Sentiment
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Bewildered Travel
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Meditation and the Martial Arts
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Versions of Deconversion
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Creationism on Trial
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Pontius Pilate
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Myth and Method
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Exhibiting Religion
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Boredom and the Religious Imagination
Greg Johnson is Assistant Professor of Religious Studies at the University of Colorado.
| SKU | Unavailable |
| ISBN 13 | 9780813926629 |
| ISBN 10 | 0813926629 |
| Title | Sacred Claims |
| Author | Greg Johnson |
| Series | Studies In Religion And Culture Ser |
| Condition | Unavailable |
| Binding Type | Paperback |
| Publisher | University of Virginia Press |
| Year published | 2007-09-14 |
| Number of pages | 224 |
| Cover note | Book picture is for illustrative purposes only, actual binding, cover or edition may vary. |
| Note | Unavailable |