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Last year, museums, universities and government agencies continue to move forward towards repatriation of thousands of Native American ancestors to tribal countries after decades of slow progress attracted national attention. I did.
The shift was not as clear as the US Department of the Interior. This was responsible for implementing the Native American Graves Protection and Repatriation Act of 1990.
Sub-agencies in the department, including the National Park Service and the Bureau of Land Management, collectively deported 1,366 Native American ancestors last year. The department’s efforts reflect the perceptions recorded in internal memos in late 2023, and that there is an important leadership role to play under Nagpra. Only the Illinois State Museum, an agency that Propublica reported in detail, has come close to many as relocations of over 1,320 people remained excavated from one site.
The focus on repatriation increased in conjunction with Propublica’s reporting of failed legal compliance in 2023.
“For too long, ancestors and tribal cultural items have been separated from the community and rested on museum shelves,” the Interior Secretary said in an October 2023 memo.
In response to a question from Propublica, a spokesman for the Department of Home Affairs did not say whether the focus is on repatriation of the department or not will continue under Donald Trump’s second presidency. It pointed to new regulations finalized in 2023, aimed at speeding up the process. Regulations enacted last year require that more institutions be removed from tribal accounts of history and relations with areas where artefacts were removed. The rules also set new deadlines for the system to comply with the law.
In total, museums, universities and institutions across the country have returned more than 10,300 Native American ancestors to their tribes last year. In total, the year will be the largest year in 2024 for the repatriation of ancestors, according to the online Propobrica database, which allows the public to search records of more than 600 museums and universities that must comply with the law. Masu. Today, Propublica has updated its database to show the progress of its repatriation until January 6th, 2025.
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Outside the Department of the Interior and the Illinois State Museum, state universities also recorded significant advancements. For example, Sacramento, California State University, has repatriated 873 Native American bodies that were previously held at the collection.
Last year’s development follows a record number of repatriation in 2023, when the agency has returned 18,000 Native American ancestors.
“Progress shows that regulations are working,” said Shannon O’Laurin, chief executive officer of the American Indian Affairs Association, a nonprofit advocating for the rights of Native Americans.
Nearly 60% of their ancestors have been reported to be Nagpra for many years, but are now repatriated, yet at least 90,000 people must be returned to the tribe. The Home Office acknowledges that many of the human remains have ultimately not been calculated for a long time in federal inventory. Much of the department’s collection is scattered across the country in university and museum repositories that are not monitored by the federal government, officials said.
Agent staff also said last year they would need ongoing funding for their efforts. He said this could prove challenging under an administration focused on spending and staffing cuts.
“We need to maintain this work until all ancestors in DOI control are repatriated,” said one Interior Department employee last year, a federal advisory committee consisting of representatives from museums, science and tribes. He spoke to the Nagpra Review Committee.
The Arizona State Museum in Tucson is one of the institutions that passed through the collection to determine what belongs to the federal government. Credit: Michael Barrera/Wikimedia
More things to do at the Ministry of Home Affairs
Just a year ago, the Ministry of Home Affairs had not yet repatriated more than 3,000 ancestors to its home country, many of which were excavated in 20th century archaeological excavations and infrastructure projects on federal and tribal lands. .
Last year, the department’s progress to repatriate 1,366 Native American ancestors comes after a top official sent an order in late 2023 directives directing the interior authority to prioritize work. Also, some agencies are paying more for repatriation.
“Looking at the previous budget, we were unable to allocate funds for Nagpra,” Tamara Billie, chief of cultural resource management at the Indian Affairs Bureau, told the NAGPRA review committee last May.
She estimated that the bureau would cost millions of dollars in the next three to five years to repatriate hundreds of ancestors who have not yet reunited with the tribe.
Since Congress passed NAGPRA in 1990, federal staff have tried to find collections excavated on federal and tribal lands, but museums and universities have left behind many paper paths to other institutions. I often found that I had transferred my holdings.
Last year, authorities said only a handful of repositories, such as the Arizona State Museum in Tucson, looked into the collections to determine what belonged to the federal government.
“Some people submitted very detailed things, and in some cases they submitted itemized stock information,” said Bridget Ambler with the Bureau of Land Management at a National Nagpra Review Board hearing last year. said. “But, to be honest, for the majority, we are fully aware of what the nature of those collections is and whether they contain human remains or nagpura cultural items. I haven’t done it.”
Under Nagpra’s new regulations, museums and universities had a deadline for January this year to pass on a list of items within the facility that should be included in federal inventory. The requirement has led museums and universities to submit approximately 1,000 new notices to the Ministry of Home Affairs, the manager of the Nagpra programme said during recorded training last month. It is not clear how much of the ancestral artifacts are explained in these notices.
The display case at the Dixon Mounds Museum previously carried human remains. Credit: Sky Hopinka by ProPublica
Progress in Illinois and Ohio
At the Illinois State Museum, which holds the second-largest collection of Native American artifacts, leadership had already focused on improving the repatriation record. It was then enacted along with new state laws and updated regulations from the Department of Home Affairs. State law following Propublica’s report gave tribes more control over responsibilities. They also established funds for repatriation work, including trips to the museum to consult with collections and to the museum to refill the ruins.
Many of the remains held by the state museum came from burial mounds excavated by chiropractor Don Dixon in the 1920s. He transformed the burial ground into a roadside charm. Over the years, Native Americans, whose tribes were forced to be taken away by other states, protested the exhibit that later became the Dixon Mounds Museum, a branch of the Illinois State Museum.
The state eventually closed the exhibit on the burial mound, but the museum maintained the human remains, unable to trace the living people, and therefore not repatriated. That was up to the past year.
On February 24, 2024, the Illinois State Museum issued a notice in the Federal Register that 1,325 ancestors and the thousands of items buried there could be used by tribes for repatriation. As of the beginning of this year, the Illinois State Museum held the remains of an estimated 5,800 Native American ancestors.
Currently, only Ohio’s historic ties hold more than 7,900 non-human remains in total, according to federal government data. About 30 years ago before 2024, the Columbus facility returned fewer than 20 ancestors back to their tribes. However, last year it showed signs of progress by creating more than 150 ancestor artefacts. This means that about 2% of the skeletal collection reported in Nagpra could be repatriated. In an email, a museum spokesman said he hopes to complete more deportations in consultation with tribal partners who asked the museum “we will not rush this important work.” I stated.
Like Illinois, Ohio facilities collections originate primarily from burial mounds from centuries ago in states where tribal states were forced to be removed.
“It’s time for the nation to take repatriation seriously.”
More state support for repatriation could also be on the Arizona horizon. Last month, Gov. Katie Hobbs announced that he would be asking lawmakers to spend $7 million to support repatriation efforts at the Arizona State Museum.
Located on the University of Arizona campus in Tucson, the museum is a state and federal repository. Over the years, records have been repatriated, but have yet to return to the southwestern tribes that more than half of their collection are reported based on Nagpra (a site of a total of 2,600 ancestors).
“The museum’s hardworking staff did their best to repatriate human remains and artefacts to the tribe without any major financial investments from the nation,” Democrat Hobbs said last month to tribal leaders. I stated in a prepared statement. “It’s time for that to change. It’s time for the nation to take repatriation seriously.”
Some museums scrambled Native American items to remove from the display. These museums didn’t have to be.
One of the museum’s challenges in trying to fully comply with the law comes from the fact that it continues to receive human remains for its status as a state repository. Arizona medical inspectors sent the bodies of museum humans they encountered in their investigation, including Native American ancestors. According to Jim Watson, Associate Director of the Arizona State Museum, the marauders surrendered items and bones excavated from the grave. (Praise violates federal law.)
“We receive individuals or mail or objects from civilians, especially when individuals die and relatives pass through their own,” he told the Nagpra Review Committee last spring. “For example, they find boxes in their garages or attics and say “from Arizona,” “artifacts from Arizona,” “artifacts from Phoenix,” or “an ancestor relic.” So they ship them to the University of Arizona, but in many cases they don’t contact us first. ”
He estimates that the museum will receive such packages two or three times a year.
Ash NGU provided data analysis.
