Historical Society sells $370K of Indian Artifacts

[homestyle]

Oregon's laws are a bit confusing. Every time I read them I come away with a slightly different impression.

I'm not surprised they had to look into the NAGPRA aspect, because of the provision in both ARPA and NAGPRA that allows the feds to charge people with a violation of the federal law if a state law was violated. In Oregon, human hair is defined as human remains, but I think it also had to come from a burial or cairn to fully meet the definition. The hair on the shirt, probably didn't come from a burial or cairn, but it could have been acquired without the permission of the individual who supplied it, I'm thinking scalped here.

I don't think it sets much of a precedent for artifact collections that are from archaeological sites, because even though the shirt is technically an artifact it is a historic artifact and probably didn't come from an archaeological site. If it didn't have the human hair I don't think there would have been any concern with whether it was legal to sell.