ABSTRACT
The Committee was an advisory and lobbying group that helped promote and guide federal archaeological salvage programs from ca. 1944 to the 1970s. A key concern of Native Americans has been how their cultural pasts have been interpreted by archaeologists. The program was designed to meet the expressed need by working professionals in Historic Preservation and Cultural Resource Management (CRM), land management, environmental consulting firms, and Native American tribes and First Nations governments and cultural preservation offices, for professional level continuing education. The ethical conflict between the "public good" concept of curating human remains for future study and educational purposes versus the excavation and curation of remains seen as desecration and the quest for repatriation was palpable. The advent of the World Archaeological Congress in 1986 fore-fronted archaeological ethics and descendant community relationships and changed the dialogue within the United States archaeological profession.
