NAGPRA Comics is a grant-funded comic series that tells true stories about
repatriation from Native Nations' perspectives through applied comics. Sonya Atalay, Jen Shannon, and John Swogger produce the series. |
Sonya Atalay |
Alina PeteAlina Pete is a nehiyaw comics creator and writer from Little Pine
First Nations. Their work has been featured in several comic, ttrpg and short story anthologies. They were co-editor for The Woman In the Woods: And Other North American Tales, and for the upcoming anthology, Indiginerds: Tales of Modern Indigenous Life. Learn all about Alina's work here. |
Jen Shannon |
John Swogger |
How we got started...NAGPRA Comics started as a storyboard Sonya and Jen created about testimony and NAGPRA for the University of Colorado's Center for Native American and Indigenous Studies Indigenous Storytelling and the Law symposium in 2017. We then worked with John to create NAGPRA Comics from the storyboard ideas.
In 2017 we launched NAGPRA Comics and its first issue at Indigenous Comic Con in Albuquerque, NM. Since then, we have presented this work at the American Anthropological Association, the Association of Tribal Archives Libraries and Museums, the Society of American Archaeology,the Graphic Justice conference, and more. We attended Indigenous Comic Con with co-authors Shannon Martin and her mother Sydney, as well as Sonya's son Bo Mendoza and John's wife Freja. We were delighted they could join us! |
What's happening now...More comics! We were delighted by the response to the first comic - over 7,000 copies were printed and distributed to Native community members, university instructors and professors, and graduate students...as well as anthropology, archaeology, Indigenous studies, and museum studies conference goers. And, the comic continues to be downloaded from this site.
This has really encouraged us to keep going - we are currently producing three more issues right now, so we added a new member to our team in 2022 -- welcome, Alina Pete! |
In We Are Coming Home, Robert Janes wrote of the return of medicine bundles to the Blackfoot Nation: “The museum profession is fond of saying that ‘museums keep things for posterity.’ By 1998, we had concluded that posterity had arrived--both for the Blackfoot and for the Glenbow” (Janes 2015, 255, emphasis added). My intention here, following Janes, is to impart a call to redefine the “who” and the “when” of posterity. Posterity is not (or not only) the general public in an unidentified future: it is Indigenous peoples, today. The purpose of this reorientation relates to what many of us who work closely in collections with Native peoples already have come to learn: that more so than for connecting with their past, collections and heritage work is about maintaining well-being in their communities in planning for their future, and future generations.
- Jen Shannon, 2019, Museum Anthropology 41(1):5 |