Provinces of Meaning: Determining Cultural Affiliation under the Native American Graves Protection and Repatriation Act

Abstract:This essay utilizes Alfred Schutz's finite provinces of meaning to understand problems associated with the determination of cultural affiliation under the Native American Graves Protection and Repatriation Act (NAGPRA). Using their own ten-year experience with the NAGRPA consultation process, the author contends that by using multiple provinces of meaning to determine cultural affiliation, NAGPRA failed to adequately consider that by their distinctness, disputes between the oral tradition and science could not be easily resolved within the confines of either. Instead, a resolution would require a resort to yet a third province of meaning, that of the law, which by nature is more closely aligned with science than the oral tradition. As a result, NAGPRA claims made by native people based on the oral tradition found themselves at a distinct disadvantage.