Museums, universities urged to comply with Native American Graves Protection and Repatriation Act. A bipartisan group of U.S. senators sent letters to five federally funded universities and museums urging them to comply with the Native American Graves Protection and Repatrims ation Act of 1990. The letters to the University of California, Berkeley, Harvard University, Illinois State Museum, Indiana University and the Ohio History Connection follow media reports that those institutions have failed the mandate to return Native American cultural items and ancestral remains required by the federal law. Leading the effort is Sen. Brian Schatz (D-HI), chairman of the Senate Committee on Indian Affairs, and Sen, Lisa Murkowski (R-AK), the committee’s vice chairman. Sen. Mazie K. Hirono (D-HI) also signed the letters.
International language experts estimate that without intervention, about one language will be lost every month for the next 40 years, with indigenous languages in northeast South America, Alaska to Oregon, and northern Australia at the highest risk. A study published on April 19 in Science Advances said that currently, there are around 7,000 known languages on the planet, highlighting just how much humanity stands to lose and why it’s worth saving. The languages are being documented in a publicly available library called Grammbank—currently, the world’s largest grammar database aimed at preserving this legacy of human communication, culture, and cognition.
Those are your headlines at this hour. I’m Colette Keith in the KIPI News center.
