College of Behavioral & Social Sciences
Permanent URI for this communityhttp://hdl.handle.net/1903/8
The collections in this community comprise faculty research works, as well as graduate theses and dissertations..
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Item The Native American Graves Protection and Repatriation Act and Faunal Repatriation(2024) Touchin, Jewel Miriam; Palus, Matthew M; Anthropology; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md.)The Native American Graves Protection and Repatriation Act (NAGPRA) was enacted in 1990 for the repatriation and disposition of certain Native American human remains, funerary objects, sacred objects, and objects of cultural patrimony. Although it has been 34 years since the law was enacted, tribal nations have experienced hurdles associated with repatriating faunal remains from institutions. This thesis uses data from the Federal Register, published sources documenting oral histories, and the National NAGPRA website to address two research questions. In addition, a survey questionnaire provided additional information from bioarchaeologists and faunal analysts, and tribal cultural resources professionals regarding their general thoughts on NAGPRA. These sources of information were analyzed to address two questions:• How have dog remains been repatriated through NAGPRA? • Are there any trends in the data that show progression and integration of tribal voices or tribal input regarding faunal repatriation during the NAGPRA process? This is an important issue for tribal communities who have different ways of defining faunal remains based on their concepts of personhood and based on their oral traditions. This thesis focuses on dog remains and attempts to demonstrate how dog remains have been repatriated in the past and to identify any trends that show tribal input during the repatriation process.Item WHO IS A PERSON AND WHY? A STUDY OF PERSONHOOD IN THEORY AND THE LAW(2012) Chandler Garcia, Lynne Marie; McIntosh, Wayne; Government and Politics; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md.)This study concerns what it means to be a person and the role the law plays in bestowing the status of person. The purpose of this dissertation is to further our understanding of how courts in the U.S., and especially the U.S. Supreme Court, have defined "person" as a legal construct within Constitutional law. In order to achieve this, court decisions concerning the personhood of key entities with a claim to personhood are analyzed and compared in order to yield a more meaningful understanding of the word "person." The entities studied include slaves, corporations, fetuses, and higher-order animals. To focus the study, several theoretical dichotomies are presented that unite the scholarship of personhood as it pertains to each of these entities. These include the dichotomy between a human being and person; property and person; and inclusion or exclusion in a community of persons. Each of these entities is then thoroughly examined in terms of the theories of personhood that are applicable to that entity, the particular historical and political circumstances that surround each entity, and finally the court decisions that determined that entity's status as a person. Through careful analysis of court documents, the study tests to see if the legal decisions reflect the dichotomies between person and human being or person and property. Further, these legal decisions are compared in order to determine if the courts have been consistent in the bestowal of personhood. Through a thorough analysis of judicial decisions concerning personhood combined with a theoretical foundation of the interdisciplinary discussions that inform and affect judicial and moral personhood, this study seeks a more concrete answer to the question, "Who is a person and why?"