Identity in Ruins: Repatriation, Religion and Representation

FAIN: FT-53324-05

Greg Bruce Johnson
Franklin and Marshall College (Lancaster, PA 17603-2827)

This project is a study of repatriation policy and practice in contemporary Hawaii, with special attention to potential test cases under the Native American Graves Protection and Repatriation Act of 1990. This project is designed to explore the various and often unexpected consequences of a paradigmatic cultural rights law as it faces implementation. Attention is focused on religious language as spoken by native claimants under the law and to the challenges such discourse poses for a variety of audiences. The central thesis to be explored is that such laws establish the conditions of their own potential demise through enabling a diversity of contested and often conflicting claims.