ABSTRACT
This volume represents a vanguard of productive and meaningful collaborations between anthropological researchers and Indigenous descendant communities. This chapter will situate these contributions within the history and current climate of work with human remains in both repatriation and collaboration. Times have changed significantly in Canada, the United States, and other countries since the first instances of productive work between anthropologists and First Nations/Native American peoples. Nevertheless, some scholars and academic communities continue to privilege “pure” research and publication over the textured and relationship-based work that true collaboration produces. This chapter asserts, instead, that the contributions to this volume embody the kind of careful, forward-looking, and committed labor that should characterize the entire future of North American Anthropology, Archaeology, and Museum Studies.
