What do repatriation and reclamation sound like? Two examples from the Hopi Cultural Preservation Office

Abstract

When the Native American Graves Protection and Repatriation Act (NAGPRA) was passed in 1990, it marked an important shift in relations between tribal communities and non-tribal museums in the United States. By listening to how different speakers at the Hopi Cultural Preservation Office talk about repatriation and reclamation, we can see that these processes involve more than the return of ancestors and belongings; they also influence how people speak about and express group identity. In discussions about repatriation, Hopi community members frequently talk to outsiders and adjust to their ways of speaking, if only temporarily. I compare two instances in which speakers creatively used possessive constructions to convey different scales of identity and argue that Bakhtin's concept of “addressivity” illuminates connections between the two. More broadly, I suggest that this concept is useful for thinking about how relationships between tribal and non-tribal institutions might continue to be transformed in ways that are responsive to contemporary Indigenous claims and presence.