Today on American Indian Airwaves (AIA), listeners will hear our special guest discuss the Native American Graves Protection and Repatriation Act (NAGPRA), its history and January 2024 modifications along with its implications for Native Americans. In addition, our guest will provide an in-depth analysis about the increased aqua or ocean mining by non-renewable extractive industry companies for rare minerals - as part of the Green Economy – potentially jeopardizing, threatening, and/or destroying Native American sacred sites currently under the ocean. Our guest addresses what this situation means for Native American sacred sites off the coastal shorelines of Indigenous people’s traditional territories?  Are there protections in place for these sacred sites? What happens when private companies encounter these sacred sites, and Native American ancestors, sacred items, and forms of cultural patrimony? What roles does NAGPRA play in these situations or does it? 

The Native American Graves Protection and Repatriation Act was enacted by the U.S. Congress in 1990 with the intended purposes to protect and return of Native American ancestors, funerary objects, sacred objects, and objects of cultural patrimony. By enacting NAGPRA, Congress recognized that Native American ancestors "must at all times be treated with dignity and respect." Congress also acknowledged that Native American ancestors and other cultural items removed from Federal or tribal lands belong to the lineal descendants, Native American nations, and Native Hawaiian organizations. 

Guest:
•	Shannon O’Loughlin is a citizen of the Choctaw Nation of Oklahoma and serves the Association on American Indian Affairs as its Chief Executive and Attorney. Shannon has been practicing law for more than 24 years and is a lecturer at Johns Hopkins University. Shannon serves as Vice Chair of the Board at Native Ways Federation, which educates about informed giving to Native-led nonprofits. 

•	She is a former Chief of Staff to the National Indian Gaming Commission, where she assisted in the development and implementation of national gaming policy, and oversaw the agency’s public affairs, technology, compliance and finance divisions. Shannon was appointed by Secretary of the Department of the Interior, Sally Jewell to the Native American Graves Protection and Repatriation Act Review Committee in 2013; and was appointed by President Barack Obama as the first Native American to the Cultural Property Advisory Committee within the State Department in 2015. 

Archived programs can be heard on Soundcloud at: https://soundcloud.com/burntswamp

American Indian Airwaves streams on over ten podcasting platforms such as Amazon Music, Apple Podcast, Audible, Backtracks.fm, Gaana, Google Podcast, Fyyd, iHeart Media, Mixcloud, Player.fm, Podbay.fm, Podcast Republic, SoundCloud, Spotify, Tunein, YouTube, and more.


NAGPRA, Protecting Sacred Sites from Ocean Mining in Green Capitalism’s Expanded Violence

American Indian Airwaves (AIA), an Indigenous public affairs radio porgram and, perhaps, the longest running Native American radio program within both Indigenous and the United States broadcast communication histories. Also, AIA broadcast weekly every Thursday from 7pm to 8pm (PCT) on KPFK FM 90.7 Los Angeles (http://www.kpfk.org).  Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/aiacr


American Indian Airwaves is produced in Burntswamp Studios and started broadcasting on March 1st, 1973 on KPFK in order to give Indigenous peoples and their respective First Nations a voice about the continuous struggles against Settler Colonialism and imperialism by the occupying and settler societies often referred to as the United States, Canada, Mexico, and the Latin and South America countries located therein.

American Indian Airwaves operates as an all-volunteer collective with no corporate sponsorship and no underwriters.