NAGPRA Intensive Training Program Receives NEH funding

The National Endowment for the Humanities (NEH) has awarded three years of funding to a training program developed jointly by the NAGPRA offices at the University of Illinois and Indiana University. The award punctuates the success of and broad need for the training known as INSTEP (Intensive NAGPRA Summer Training & Education Program).

INSTEP focuses on sharing best practices related to Ancestral human remains and cultural items under NAGPRA, the Native American Graves Protection and Repatriation Act. Training in this area is lacking in many academic anthropology programs, so INSTEP was launched in 2023 to fill some of this gap on a national level.

Krystiana Krupa, the university’s NAGPRA Program Officer (situated in the Office of the Vice Chancellor for Research and Innovation), said financial accessibility to training has been a key component of the program since its inception.

“Many of our participants are students or come from small museum or Tribal Nation employment that may not have substantial budgets for professional development activities,” said Krupa. “Our receipt of NEH funding allows us to continue to offer travel scholarships to participants who may not otherwise receive the opportunity to acquire these critical, Federally-mandated skills in pursuing NAGPRA compliance.”

The INSTEP program was one of 44 eligible applications submitted to the NEH; 10 were funded.

“Our NEH proposal target education related to the 2024 revisions to the NAGPRA regulations, which drastically altered compliance requirements that many professionals are still catching up with,” said Krupa. “We’re particularly excited to also be producing a digital, open-access textbook on compliance strategies and successes for the NAGPRA community, with support from this award.”

The 2026 summer intensive program will take place in Flagstaff, Arizona, in collaboration with the Museum of Northern Arizona. In 2025, the program was hosted by the South Carolina Institute for Archaeology and Anthropology. The U. of I. hosted INSTEP on campus in 2024, and the pilot program in 2023 was at Indiana University.

Initial funding for INSTEP was provided by a Wenner-Gren Foundation Global Initiatives Grant. In 2025, program funding provided by the Center for Indigenous Science at the U. of I. allowed INSTEP to offer its standard summer program as well as a program in the fall geared toward NAGPRA concerns for Tribal practitioners in Oklahoma. The NEH funding award covers 2026, 2027, and 2028.

Visit the INSTEP webpage: https://nagpra.illinois.edu/intensive-nagpra-summer-training-education-program-instep/

Read about the INSTEP training that took place on campus the summer of 2024:  https://research.illinois.edu/news/feature/nagpra-training-campus-draws-practitioners-around-world-learn-and-share-best-practices