Protocols for Native American Archival Materials
set of Best Professional Practices
The Protocols for Native American Archival Materials (PNAAM) is a set of best professional practices around the care and use of American Indian archival materials that are held in non-tribal libraries, archives, museums, and other cultural institutions.
Development
PNAAM was originally developed by the First Archivist Circle in 2006 to promote conversation, collaboration, and cultural sensitivity. They were highly influenced by Australia's Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Protocols for Libraries, Archives, and Information Services. PNAAM complements the Native American Graves Protection and Repatriation Act of 1990, which does not cover the repatriation of archival materials that are not human remains or funerary items. Recent scholarship notes that the concept of archival sovereignty and the connection between archival practices and indigenous wellbeing have become more central part of conversations of indigenous archival materials. Many indigenous communities recognized how items are not just a piece of documentation but a piece of memory of those who came before us. This shows us how PNAAM and NAGPRA go hand in hand with each other, how it is important to have these rules about how indigenous culture is archived.
Archivists and other activists presented the document to the Society of American Archivists (SAA) in 2008 and again in 2012, but SAA declined to endorse the document both times. Critics' comments included culturally insensitive and white supremacist language and promoted the traditional Western view of archives, that all researchers should be provided with unrestricted access to archival materials. Research shows that many Native American tribes maintain cultural specific information that is based on either the season, the gender, or the ceremony.
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The citation trail is more important than the brevity of the summary: it shows where individual claims can be examined in context. The source revision retrieved here is dated Jun 1, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q105560355. None of the 0 selected statements returned an explicit reference. The first chronological checks are 2006, 1990, 2008 and 2012.
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This entry incorporates text from “Protocols for Native American Archival Materials” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.