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This commentary defends repatriation laws in anthropology, suggesting they mitigate trauma linked to research on Native American remains.
Weiss’s paper argues that repatriation laws prevent further research and new scientific knowledge, particularly in anthropology. For Weiss and others, these laws are unscientific. In this commentary, I offer a brief defence of repatriation laws. I argue that these laws prevent further significant historical harms and trauma that can result from research on Native American remains and that researchers ought to embrace such laws. Furthermore, I suggest we have reason to be sceptical about Weiss’s argument.
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Harrison Munday (2025) studied this question.
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