Ann M. Tweedie, Seattle: University of Washington Press, 2002, xxiv + 175 pages.Reviewer: Ed Koenig Wilfrid Laurier UniversityDrawing Back Culture is anthropologist Ann M. Tweedie's account of challenges the Makah face in their efforts to repatriate objects. The Makah live in the Northwest corner of Washington State, across the strait from Vancouver Island, where other Nootka groups to whom the Makah are culturally linked are located. A great deal of media attention was directed toward the Makah in the late 1990s when they asserted their traditional rights to hunt whales that were regarded by environmentalist groups as a species in need of protection. The whale hunt receives a good deal of attention in the book (since whaling objects are an important class among those eligible for return), but she brings quite remarkable insights to a wide range of repatriation issues.The author's analysis of the repatriation process, as manifested in this one particular case, is appropriately broad, but she pays particular attention to efforts to address the requirements of the Native American Graves Protection and Repatriation Act (NAGPRA). This law (which is conveniently included in full in the Appendix) was passed in 1990, and it applies only to Native peoples living within the boundaries of the United States of America.In terms of theoretical contributions, Tweedie's book is outstanding: through her Makah case study, she questions the suitability of several concepts and assumptions that are key to NAGPRA and thereby improves the knowledge base through which the intended results of this legislation might be achieved. Her assessments of this Act, and of repatriation policies more broadly, are equally important as an example of applied anthropology. Drawing Back Culture is especially compelling because it is based on sound fieldwork.The book is nicely organized, allowing for a coherent presentation of often overlapping issues. In the first chapter Tweedie outlines Makah perspectives on NAGPRA, noting ambiguities in how concepts such as sacred patrimony (communal ownership), religious leader, and traditional, are understood according to the Act and within the Makah community. Tweedie does not pretend that community perspectives are unanimous.In the second chapter, through effective use of secondary written sources and some archaeological evidence, Tweedie depicts pre-contact Makah life, which gives the reader background information relevant to current repatriation issues. She reads this evidence as indicating that the Makah's pre-contact ancestors had a strong sense of social stratification and personal of things, characteristics not easily reconcilable with NAGPRA's assumptions about communities. The Makah are apprehensive about repatriation processes, since ownership of cultural objects is often only traceable through individuals, and many objects, especially those associated with the whale hunt, were originally owned by elite community members. This raises contentious questions about who currently owns such objects: though most recognize potential community benefits, repatriation might also introduce or reinforce particular relations of power within the group.Tweedie continues her careful analysis of how history is intertwined with the present in chapter 3 where she discusses the conditions under which the Makah were originally dispossessed of culturally significant items. Her treatment of this topic is typical of the sound analytical approach she employs throughout the book. While acknowledging that some collectors were not the most scrupulous of individuals, and that colonialist expansion should not be ignored as a backdrop for economic transactions that involved objects, Tweedie also recognizes native peoples' roles in collecting activities when she notes their active responses to new market opportunities (e.g., development of new symbolic decorations on basketry made for tourist markets). …