Paper short abstract:

A variety of management regimes have evolved in modern America to protect indigenous rights to sacred natural and cultural resources. Using a political ecological framework, this paper examines subsistence and repatriation rights in the Pacific Northwest in order to assess the prospects and problems in implementing meaningful indigenous rights.

Paper long abstract:

In the United States the strongest protections of indigenous rights have come through treaties with Indian tribes, and court decisions enforcing these rights. Yet a variety of other regimes have evolved in post-treaty America (i.e., since 1868) to protect indigenous rights to sacred sites and natural and cultural resources. The success of these other regimes, based upon limited recognition of ethnicity and cultural rights, rather than Native sovereignty, has been considerably lower from the standpoint of achieving indigenous human rights , though there are some signs of hope. Using a political ecological framework, this paper examines, in particular, subsistence rights over marine resources and repatriation rights to alienated objects of cultural patrimony in order to assess the prospects and problems in implementing indigenous rights in the North Pacific US and beyond.