RIVERTON—As often-White researchers dig up ancient Native sites, the archaeology of the West can be fraught with tension. A group of Wyoming archaeologists claims that the BLM has overstepped its authority. Wyoming enjoys a rich archaeological heritage, but the question of who can lay claim to that heritage is now making its way through the courts.  On July 24, the Wyoming Association of Professional Archaeologists filed a lawsuit against Secretary of the Interior Doug Burgum, the U.S. Department of the Interior and the Bureau of Land Management’s Wyoming and Colorado offices. The lawsuit argues that the boundaries of the Native American Graves Protection and Repatriation Act had been expanded far beyond what Congress had intended. The case revolves around six particular sites: Shute Creek, Wardell Bison Trap, Upper Muddy Creek Village, Studhorse Butte, 48UT920 and Eagle Rock Shelter.  Although the collection of material found at Eagle Rock Shelter is currently housed at the Fort Bridger State Historic Site in Uinta County, the site itself is located in Colorado; all five of the other sites are in Wyoming. The plaintiffs claim that in 2010 and 2024 rulemaking, the BLM changed how it goes about implementing the Native American Graves Protection and Repatriation Act in a way that oversteps its authority and potentially conflicts with the Archaeological Resources Protections Act and the National Historic Preservation Act. In January 2025, the University of Wyoming Archaeological Repository notified BLM Wyoming that it had in its custody collections from seven BLM archaeological sites where human remains had been discovered, and that the human remains and related items were not included in its collections, according to the filing. In June 2025, the BLM published a Notice of Inventory Completion and a Notice of Intended Disposition regarding the human remains in question and thousands of items within the UW repository’s possession claimed to be associated funerary objects.  Then, in July 2025, the BLM sent a letter stating that in consultation with 15 tribes it had determined that the entirety of the archaeological collections from seven sites, including four sites named in the lawsuit, are funerary objects associated with NAGPRA human remains housed in the University of Wyoming Human Remains Repository. The BLM stated that it intended to repatriate the objects and human remains to claimant tribes and asked that the items identified be moved to the Human Remains Repository. This sparked a back-and-forth between the Office of the Wyoming State Archaeologist and the BLM over whether the items identified within the UW Archaeological Repository’s possession were items subject to the Native American Graves Protection and Repatriation Act.  The Office of the Wyoming State Archaeologist also conveyed that it did not believe the Human Remains Repository had the physical space to house the over 200,000 artifacts. Additional items were identified by the BLM as associated funerary objects in April 2026. Neither set of items has changed hands yet, but the case states that the BLM has notified the University of Wyoming that it plans to take possession of the items in the near future. The Eagle Rock Shelter Site went through a somewhat similar process.  At this site, the case outlines, the human remains of a single individual were found near the back of the shelter, with no artifacts found to be associated with it by archaeologists. The remains were transferred to the Ute Mountain Ute Tribe and reburied.  Now, the other items found at the site are being claimed as funerary objects, sacred objects, and/or objects of cultural patrimony, a claim which the Wyoming Association of Professional Archaeologists believes to be founded on physical proximity and traditional knowledge rather than archaeological evidence linking the items with the remains. The Native American Graves Protection and Repatriation Act, framed at the time of its passage as a compromise between the interests of Native American tribes and researchers, requires that human remains as well as cultural items such as funerary objects and ceremonial objects, which can be shown to be linked to a tribe within the United States, be repatriated to the tribe in question.  The Wyoming Association of Professional Archaeologists argues that the BLM unlawfully expanded both the definition of cultural items covered under the act and the ways in which it can be determined that these items fall under the federal law. One of these rule changes is the shift in language regarding the discovery of material. Previously, the standard was that items found with a burial were regarded as funerary objects. Now, the requirement is that items found with or near a burial are to be regarded as funerary objects. The archaeologists claim that results in items — clearly not associated with a burial but which are physically nearby — being caught up in federal repatriation claims. The Wyoming Association of Professional Archaeologists gave as an example the Wardell Bison Trap site, an archaeologically important communal buffalo hunting site in Sublette County.  “Among the thousands of bison bones and other artifacts recovered from the bonebed, records identify a single fragment of a human proximal femur recovered from one of the stratified bone beds. In reliance on the challenged regulations, BLM Wyoming has claimed that the presence of a single human bone fragment in this massive bison bonebed transforms it into a burial and thereby makes the entire contents of the bonebed … into associated funerary objects subject to repatriation.” Some of the other changes the Wyoming Association of Professional Archaeologists is challenging include deference to traditional knowledge and the requirement of informed, ongoing, affirmative assent from tribes. The filing makes the case that under current regulations, tribal traditional knowledge is broadly defined and can include safeguarded or confidential knowledge, making it difficult to independently assess.  The Wyoming Association of Professional Archaeologists argues that traditional knowledge is meant to be a factor within decisions about whether the federal law applies, not the sole determining factor. Additionally, it continues, federal law does not require obtaining consent from tribes before exhibiting or allowing research on human remains and/or cultural items. The Wyoming Association of Professional Archaeologists also argues that the federal law requires that a clear association be shown between remains or cultural items and a present-day tribe, either through direct cultural affiliation or lineal descent. In its case, it states that “Congress addressed culturally unidentifiable human remains in 25 U.S.C. 3006(c)(5), which directs the review committee to compile and inventory and ‘recommend specific actions for developing a process for disposition.'”  The lawsuit argues that the decision of what to do with these remains still rests with Congress, and that the review committee in question is meant to serve in a purely advisory role. In its filing, the Wyoming Association of Professional Archaeologists states its belief that these regulations detrimentally impact both individual researchers and education, learning, and research more broadly. The lawsuit argues that the repatriation of these items in some cases may remove the ability to study them from the scientific community forever, based on a regulatory interpretation of the Native American Graves Protection and Repatriation Act different from the one that archaeologists had been operating under prior to these rule changes. The Wyoming Association of Professional Archaeologists is clear that its objections do not have to do with either BLM Wyoming or BLM Colorado’s application of the regulations, but rather the regulatory changes in 2010 and 2024 that BLM is basing its determinations on. The group asks that the court halt the transfer until the case has been decided, enjoin the BLM and Department of Interior from “enforcing, applying, or relying on the challenged regulations” and award the Wyoming Association of Professional Archaeologists the cost of its suit and reasonable attorney’s fees. The post Wyoming archaeologists take BLM to court over Native sites, human remains appeared first on WyoFile . ...read more read less