Policymakers are urging colleges to speed up their compliance with a 1990 federal law that requires them to give human remains and other artifacts back to Indigenous communities — a practice known as repatriation.
For three decades, universities and their anthropological museums have largely failed to comply with that law, the Native American Graves Protection and Repatriation Act, which governs the return of items that they took from Native communities in the 1800s.
The delay is deeply frustrating to Kerri J. Malloy, an assistant professor of Native American and Indigenous studies at San Jose State University. As Malloy, who is enrolled in the Yurok tribe and is Karuk by descent, sees it, his ancestors’ belongings have been taken prisoner.
They’re being held at the University of California at Berkeley’s Phoebe A. Hearst Museum of Anthropology, which has the largest collection of Native American remains in the country.
“We as Native people are citizens of this country, but we are a different type of citizen,” Malloy said. “We are not permitted to have connections with our own history. That’s been claimed as property by somebody else.”
So far, Berkeley has returned about 20 percent of those items to the tribes. The university says the size of its collection, and its own discounting of the issue in the past, makes repatriation difficult.
The delays are a problem across California. In June, a state audit of the California State University system found that its campuses had returned only 6 percent of the nearly 700,000 human remains and artifacts in their possession. Out of the 21 Cal State institutions with collections, auditors discovered that more than half haven’t repatriated any remains or cultural items at all.
The campuses did not “know the extent of their collections,” the state audit said, and have not prioritized repatriation because they lacked “the policies, funding, and staffing necessary to follow the law.”
‘Simply Unacceptable’
In addition to Berkeley, Harvard University and Indiana University at Bloomington have the largest collections of Native remains among U.S. colleges.
His ancestors’ belongings have been taken prisoner.
Harvard announced in January that the university had completed the return of remains to the Wampanoag tribes in eastern Massachusetts. The university is now working on repatriation efforts involving other tribes.
Recently, lawmakers and advocates have called for more urgency. In April, a bipartisan group of 13 U.S. senators wrote in a letter to Berkeley, Harvard, Indiana, and other institutions stating that the delays were “simply unacceptable.” The group’s letter followed a ProPublica investigation that found that 600 federally funded institutions hadn’t yet complied with the law, known as Nagpra.
Museums, universities, and agencies in the United States hold more than 100,000 Native remains.
Some California lawmakers are pushing a bill that would give University of California campuses more funding to expedite the repatriation process. Additionally, it would direct universities to regularly inform the state about their progress on returning Native artifacts, create a uniform repatriation process, and consult with California tribes. The bill passed the Assembly in June and is proceeding.
For Malloy and other Native people with connections to these items, universities’ longstanding delays on repatriation have had consequences. The withholding of human remains is not only a physical disruption; for Native communities, it also disturbs an ancestor’s being properly put to rest. How many people, Malloy asks, have to walk through a museum or an archival vault to “see things that are part of who they are?”
Universities ended up with the bones of Native people, and their possessions, because of colonization. In the 19th century, universities collected Native bones and artifacts for what they said was anthropological research — and never gave them back to tribes.
Researchers and museum collectors, in collaboration with the U.S. government and military, looted items from Native homes, graves, and places of worship. Artifacts were often taken as “souvenirs” from battlefields and massacre sites. At the time, many academics wanted to study the remains to prove their prejudicial idea that Native people exhibited “racial inferiority.”
Here’s where the repatriation process stands at Berkeley, Harvard, and Indiana.
University of California at Berkeley
Berkeley’s Hearst Museum stands at the forefront of major discussions about repatriation given the size of its collection. The university has over 9,000 Native remains and 13,000 cultural items. In March, ProPublica reported that one of the institution’s well-known anthropology professors used the bones of Native people to teach his courses for decades.
In a statement to The Chronicle, the university estimates that it has about 200,000 archaeological artifacts that could potentially be classified as “sacred objects or objects of cultural patrimony” under Nagpra criteria. Dan Mogulof, a university spokesman, said Berkeley is communicating with tribes to confirm how to classify these items.
“We realize that so long as the remains of ancestors, sacred objects, and cultural items remain in the university’s possession, justice will not be served, and the healing we seek will not be complete,” Chancellor Carol T. Christ wrote in a letter addressed to the U.S. Senate’s Committee on Indian Affairs in June, responding to the concerns raised by lawmakers about delays on repatriation.
There’s another wrinkle in California: how to work with the state’s many nonfederally recognized tribes. Nagpra applies only to federally funded institutions and gives repatriation rights to federal tribal nations — meaning that other tribes could not legally take ownership of their ancestors’ items. In 2001, California passed a law eliminating that exemption at the state level.
Still, delays continue. Malloy cited two key reasons: a lack of resources and inadequate trust within tribal communities.
Often, the people responsible for overseeing universities’ repatriation efforts are faculty members who are stretched thin, Malloy said. He recommended that colleges appoint a designated tribal liaison. (As of this year, Berkeley has appointed a repatriation coordinator, a program assistant, and seven new positions overseeing collections or consultation with tribes, said Mogulof, the university spokesman.)
“If you’re going to work with tribes, you need to have somebody who understands not just tribes in themselves, but how federal Indian law works,” Malloy said. “They need to understand the history and cultural component.”
Harvard University
Harvard’s Peabody Museum of Archaeology & Ethnology holds 6,200 remains and has repatriated 38 percent of its collection.
We are not permitted to have connections with our own history. That’s been claimed as property by somebody else.
Harvard has made more progress than Berkeley on returning artifacts. These efforts date back 30 years, said Jim Peters, director of the Commonwealth of Massachusetts’ Commission on Indian Affairs.
When repatriation started, Peters said, cultural items were not properly cared for. Many artifacts were found strewn inside a small basement.
Since then, Peters and his team have categorized remains and cultural items and worked with Native families, tribal nations, and bands to track where they originated from. Harvard’s completion of repatriation to the Wampanoag tribes was a milestone.
For Peters, who is also a member of the Mashpee Wampanoag tribe, being able to work directly with repatriation has provided a connection to his people’s past, one that was lost due to colonization.
“Many tribes dispersed or were killed, so to have an opportunity to touch the past, to put aside our feelings and have an open mind, provides an opportunity to heal our past,” Peters said.
The state commission is continuing to expand repatriation efforts to other tribes in Massachusetts. For the future of repatriation, Peters suggested that universities document thoroughly and fully consider historical context.
Nicole Rura, a Harvard spokeswoman, said the Peabody Museum could not discuss specific consultation with tribes, as a part of its policy.
Indiana University at Bloomington
Indiana has about 4,800 Native remains on its campus. The university has repatriated about 17 percent of its collection.
According to an investigation this spring by the Indiana Daily Student, the university didn’t comply with Nagpra until 24 years after it passed. Though institutions were legally required to take inventory and compile reports, the university maintained a practice of classifying remains as “culturally unidentifiable,” the newspaper reported. This took advantage of a loophole that prevented Indiana from having to repatriate, and its research on the remains continued.
While compliance with the law has improved in recent years, faculty members told the Indiana Daily Student that repatriation responsibilities were largely given to the faculty, who were not prepared or equipped for them.
In June, the university co-hosted the U.S. Department of the Interior’s annual Nagpra Review Committee Meeting, alongside the Miami Tribe of Oklahoma. During the meeting, representatives stressed the importance of financial resources and an improved reporting process to speed up repatriation.
Indiana’s Nagpra Office, created in 2013, has recently built better relationships with tribal partners, said Jayne-Leigh Thomas, director of Nagpra efforts at the university. The institution has doubled the number of full-time employees dedicated to Nagpra. Indiana has “participated in one of the largest repatriation and reburial efforts in United States history,” Thomas said.
“As a matter of university policy, IU has also prohibited all research on Native American remains held by the university,” Thomas said. “IU takes these time-intensive and critical obligations very seriously.”
