Uploaded April 2023 | Updated September 2026, 1 week ago
In early 2020, Chief Black Coal’s headdress came home to the Northern Arapaho Nation after spending a century stored in a New England attic. How it got there, and how it came home, is part of a larger story about the meanings of cultural heritage versus private property. Who owns the cultural material of Native Nations across the United States? Who should care for it, and how? What role do museums and historic sites play in Native or Indigenous heritage? What should be their role? More than three decades after the passage of the Native American Graves Protection Repatriation Act (NAGPRA), these questions still provoke passionate engagement.
Jordan Dresser (Arapaho), filmmaker and former collections manager of the Northern Arapaho Tribal Historic Preservation Office and Johns Hopkins faculty member Shannon O’Loughlin (Choctaw), Chief Executive and attorney for the Association on American Indian Affairs, have worked with Native American cultural heritage as Native Nation citizens and heritage professionals. Join us as they share their experiences and insights in a wide-ranging conversation on policy and practice.
Speakers:
Shannon O’Loughlin is a citizen of the Choctaw Nation of Oklahoma and the Chief Executive and Attorney for the Association on American Indian Affairs – the oldest nonprofit serving Indian Country. Shannon has been practicing law for more than 22 years and is a lecturer at Johns Hopkins University. She is a former Chief of Staff to the National Indian Gaming Commission, where she assisted in the development and implementation of national policy throughout the agency, and oversaw the agency’s public affairs, technology, compliance and finance divisions. Shannon has also served Indian Country in the private sector as an attorney, leading a large national firm’s Indian law practice group that worked to strengthen, maintain and protect Native Nation sovereignty, self-determination and culture. 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; she was fired by President Trump in 2019. Shannon received a BA in American Indian Studies from California State University, Long Beach and joint MA and JD degrees from the University of Arizona in Indigenous Peoples Law and Policy.
Jordan Dresser (Northern Arapaho) is a documentary filmmaker and former chairman of the Northern Arapaho Nation on the Wind River Reservation in Wyoming. He graduated from the University of Wyoming in 2008 with a Bachelor of Arts degree in journalism. He has worked as a reporter for the Lincoln Journal Star, the Salt Lake Tribune, the Forum, and the Denver Post. Questions of who owns tribal artifacts and the role tribal members play in these decisions prompted Dresser to leave Wind River and earn an MA in Museum Studies at the University of San Francisco. Dresser has served as the collections manager for the Northern Arapaho Tribal Historic Preservation Office in Riverton, WY, and is currently at work on several documentary film projects. Past films include the 2016 award-winning documentary "What Was Ours, The Art of Home: A Wind River Story" (2019), "Home from School: The Children of Carlisle" (2021), and "Who She Is" (2022).
Learn more information:
https://advanced.jhu.edu/academics/graduate/ma-cultural-heritage-management/
https://advanced.jhu.edu/academics/graduate/ma-museum-studies/
Learn more about NAGPRA at the National NAGPRA Program within the Department of the Interior, National Park Service, at: nps.gov/subjects/nagpra/index
Learn more about attending the 9th Annual Repatriation Conference, hosted by the Association on American Indian Affairs, on November 7, 8 & 9, 2023 at:
indian-affairs.org/9thannualrepatriationconference
In early 2020, Chief Black Coal’s headdress came home to the Northern Arapaho Nation after spending a century stored in a New England attic. How it got there, and how it came home, is part of a larger story about the meanings of cultural heritage versus private property. Who owns the cultural material of Native Nations across the United States? Who should care for it, and how? What role do museums and historic sites play in Native or Indigenous heritage? What should be their role? More than three decades after the passage of the Native American Graves Protection Repatriation Act (NAGPRA), these questions still provoke passionate engagement.
Jordan Dresser (Arapaho), filmmaker and former collections manager of the Northern Arapaho Tribal Historic Preservation Office and Johns Hopkins faculty member Shannon O’Loughlin (Choctaw), Chief Executive and attorney for the Association on American Indian Affairs, have worked with Native American cultural heritage as Native Nation citizens and heritage professionals. Join us as they share their experiences and insights in a wide-ranging conversation on policy and practice.
Speakers:
Shannon O’Loughlin is a citizen of the Choctaw Nation of Oklahoma and the Chief Executive and Attorney for the Association on American Indian Affairs – the oldest nonprofit serving Indian Country. Shannon has been practicing law for more than 22 years and is a lecturer at Johns Hopkins University. She is a former Chief of Staff to the National Indian Gaming Commission, where she assisted in the development and implementation of national policy throughout the agency, and oversaw the agency’s public affairs, technology, compliance and finance divisions. Shannon has also served Indian Country in the private sector as an attorney, leading a large national firm’s Indian law practice group that worked to strengthen, maintain and protect Native Nation sovereignty, self-determination and culture. 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; she was fired by President Trump in 2019. Shannon received a BA in American Indian Studies from California State University, Long Beach and joint MA and JD degrees from the University of Arizona in Indigenous Peoples Law and Policy.
Jordan Dresser (Northern Arapaho) is a documentary filmmaker and former chairman of the Northern Arapaho Nation on the Wind River Reservation in Wyoming. He graduated from the University of Wyoming in 2008 with a Bachelor of Arts degree in journalism. He has worked as a reporter for the Lincoln Journal Star, the Salt Lake Tribune, the Forum, and the Denver Post. Questions of who owns tribal artifacts and the role tribal members play in these decisions prompted Dresser to leave Wind River and earn an MA in Museum Studies at the University of San Francisco. Dresser has served as the collections manager for the Northern Arapaho Tribal Historic Preservation Office in Riverton, WY, and is currently at work on several documentary film projects. Past films include the 2016 award-winning documentary "What Was Ours, The Art of Home: A Wind River Story" (2019), "Home from School: The Children of Carlisle" (2021), and "Who She Is" (2022).
Learn more information:
https://advanced.jhu.edu/academics/graduate/ma-cultural-heritage-management/
https://advanced.jhu.edu/academics/graduate/ma-museum-studies/
Learn more about NAGPRA at the National NAGPRA Program within the Department of the Interior, National Park Service, at: nps.gov/subjects/nagpra/index
Learn more about attending the 9th Annual Repatriation Conference, hosted by the Association on American Indian Affairs, on November 7, 8 & 9, 2023 at:
indian-affairs.org/9thannualrepatriationconference
