Sociocultural anthropologist Dr. Kathy Fine-Dare will examine NAGPRA compliance practices as they have been informed by sets of frictions and contradictions emanating from under-examined tropes of expertise, authenticity, and reconciliation. Drawing examples from her engagement over more than three decades as a NAGPRA scholar, activist, and practitioner, Dr. Fine-Dare will suggest that firmly embedded patterns of institutional resistance to compliance cannot change unless murky and often coercive faux transparencies are better understood through dialogue and analysis that go beyond permitted arenas of engagement. Although people understandably wish to avoid situations of discomfort and anger, Fine-Dare proposes that refusing to accept ideologies and attitudes of “harmony” and “resilience” as sufficient may be quite necessary in realizing the human rights work of NAGPRA.