The California State University system appointed Adriane Tafoya as the new project manager for the California Native American Graves and Repatriation Act (CalNAGPRA), according to a Thursday CSU news release.
Tafoya will assist the 23 campuses in creating new inventories of Native American remains held in university archives and with repatriating eligible remains and complying with the Repatriation Act and Assembly Bill 275.
Assembly Bill 275 amended CalNAGPRA to expand the definition of “California Indian Tribe” to include both federally recognized and not recognized tribes, and further required consultation with Native tribes concerning burials and repatriation, according to the text of the bill.
California state legislature passed Assembly Bill 978 in 2001, the CalNAGPRA legislation modeled after the federal NAGPRA law overseen by the National Parks Service.
NAGPRA was enacted to preserve and restore Native American burial grounds and treat their sacred lands with dignity and respect, according to the National Parks Service website.
CalNAGPRA allows federally recognized tribes in the state of California to petition for remains to be removed from Native burial grounds, many of which are held in university archives, returned to places of burial, and outlines a process for identifying remains as belonging to specific tribes, according to the California Native American Heritage Commission website.
Tafoya, who is currently the senior collections manager at the McClung Museum of Natural History and Culture at the University of Tennessee, Knoxville, is also a member of the Tejon Indian Tribe.
The Tejon Tribe of the Kitemanuk Nation are the indigenous people of the Southern San Joaquin Valley, and a majority of their more than 1,200 members live in Kern County, California, according to the tribe’s website.
Rachel McBride-Praetorius, director of Tribal Relations at Chico State, said in the press release that Tafoya is uniquely qualified for the position because of her museum expertise and her understanding of the importance of CalNAGPRA.
“The CSU has thousands of collections to inventory. [Tafoya’s] strong experience in project management and museum studies education and her passion for the important work of CalNAGPRA make her a great fit to take on this work," McBride-Praetorius said.
Tafoya earned a Bachelor of Arts in art from Chico State and a Master of Arts in museum studies from John F. Kennedy University.
After finishing museum curation projects with the University of Tennessee, Tafoya will start working with the CSU system on June 1.
