ABSTRACT
As an anthropologist, Franz Boas and his educational mission were caught up in the ethos, as were his Native American contemporaries. If Native Americans are to negotiate successfully, it is understood that their modes of reference and predication must point to or describe states of affairs that satisfy protocol. Replicas become issues, however, in so far as replicas become commodities. Replicas of Native American artifacts, created by Native Americans and non-Native Americans, are sometimes created for sale. Western modes of discursive practice need be sensitive to Native American discursive practices and conceptual patterns of meaning. In terms of Western discursive practices, legal or otherwise, conversations are habitually individuated from their discursive events. Artifactualized discourse is inherently related to the decontextualization of material artifacts. By privileging legal modes of discourse, and by privileging artifactualized form, NAGPRA negotiations are putting Native American communities at a disadvantage.
