The Act Itself
This Act aims to safeguard historical landmarks, including buildings, sites, and structures, that are important to understanding American history. Its primary is preservation, the act primarily considers the effect on the historical site before any project is undertaken.
This Act provides grant matching in an effort to help conserve local/state sites. It also mandates consultation with tribes when the historic cite in question is located on tribal land.
What the Act Covers?
The Act covers historic landmarks or structures or anything of a similar nature that is on federal land or on land controlled by the Federal Government. The landmark must be considered a national monument.
What is Excluded?
This Act expressly excludes any construction of the text that would divest the state or a subdivision of the state to lack civil or criminal jurisdiction in land acquired by the United States.
What Does the Act Apply to?
The Act does not apply to state or privately owned land, but it does contain provisions that allow state or private land that contains a monument of national significance under federal care. The President in unable to establish federal landmarks in Wyoming, they must be made by an act of Congress.
Law Review Articles
Brody Hinds, Twenty-Five Years Later: The Amendments to the National Historic Preservation Act and Tribal Consultation, 42 Am. Indian L. Rev. 141 (2017), provides an analysis of how the act applies to tribes and argues for further amendments.
Amanda M. Marincic, The National Historic Preservation Act: An Inadequate Attempt to Protect the Cultural and Religious Sites of Native Nations, 103 Iowa L. Rev. 1777 (2018), provides criticism of the act.