Charles Benedict Davenport, Madison Grant, and Henry Fairfield Osborn founded the Galton Society for the Study of the Origin and Evolution of Man, or the Galton Society, in New York City, New York, in 1918. The Galton Society was a scientific society that promoted the study of humans in terms of race in service to the US eugenics movement. The Galton Society was named in honor of Francis Galton who first coined the term eugenics in 1883. Galton and other eugenics proponents claimed that the human species could improve through selective breeding that restricted who could have children. Some of the society members were scientists from a wide range of disciplines who supported the now disproven notion that fundamental biological differences exist between races that may justify the control of human reproduction. The Galton Society drew on the scientific credibility and influence of its members to advocate for eugenics programs, such as immigration restriction laws, in the US.

The US Congress passed the Native American Graves Protection and Repatriation Act, or NAGPRA, on 27 October 1990, and then-President George H. W. Bush signed it into law on 16 November 1990. Overseen primarily by the US National Parks Service, NAGPRA is a federal law that governs the treatment and possession of Indigenous human remains and culturally significant objects discovered on federal or tribal land. Prompted by demands in the 1970s and 1980s for repatriation of Indigenous remains and objects held in museums and research centers, the act grants direct familial descendants and associated tribes the authority to determine the appropriate fate of those items. It also establishes a legal process through which tribes can reclaim those items from museums or other institutions receiving federal funding. As the first US federal law to directly assert Indigenous people’s legal ownership over their cultural items and bodily remains, NAGPRA established a structured system of repatriation and collaboration among tribes, museums, and scientific institutions.