NAGPRA updates

 

Pinal Apache Child Returning Home to San Carlos After More Than 150 Years

July 13, 2026 - by News Director

SAN CARLOS — More than a century and a half after losing his life during military operations (uh, massacre) in the Pinal Mountains, a Pinal Apache child will finally return home to the San Carlos Apache Reservation.

The National Museum of Health and Medicine in Silver Spring, Maryland, has officially published a Notice of Inventory Completion in the Federal Register.  The notice, issued under the federal Native American Graves Protection and Repatriation Act (NAGPRA), clears the final legal pathway for the child’s remains to be returned to tribal leaders.

Historical Records Document Tragic Timeline

According to federal inventory records, the child — believed to have been under 12 years old — was killed in July 1870 in Arizona’s Pinal Mountains.  The death occurred during military operations involving scout units serving under U.S. Army Lieutenant H.B. Cushing of the 3rd Cavalry’s F Troop.

Historical documentation reveals that the child’s partial cranium was transferred to the Army Medical Museum in April 1872 by Acting Assistant Surgeon W.B. Dods via U.S. Army Surgeon C. McCormick. The remains were held in federal institutional collections for 154 years.

Path to Repatriation

Following formal consultations required under federal law, officials established a definitive cultural affiliation between the remains and the San Carlos Apache Tribe of the San Carlos Reservation.

The publication of the federal notice satisfies the statutory waiting period under NAGPRA, thereby legally permitting the physical transfer of the remains on or after Aug. 3, 2026.  The repatriation will allow the San Carlos Apache Tribe to reclaim the child and conduct traditional resting ceremonies according to tribal customs.

For Indigenous Nations across the country, the repatriation process represents a vital effort to restore dignity, heal multi-generational wounds, and honor ancestors whose graves and remains were historically disturbed.

https://gilaherald.com/pinal-apache-child-returning-home-to-san-carlos-after-more-than-150-years/

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Sen. Schatz Presses Harvard Over Delayed Return of Native Ancestors

The Peabody Museum of Archaeology and Ethnology was founded in 1866. U.S. Sen. Brian Schatz pressed Harvard this month to explain delays in returning Native ancestors and cultural items held by the University. | By Barbara A. Sheehan

By Shalini N. Ramchune, Crimson Staff Writer

June 24, 2026

United States Senator Brian Schatz (D-Hawaii) pressed Harvard earlier this month to explain why Native ancestors and cultural items remain in its possession, renewing calls for the University to speed up its repatriation efforts under a federal law requiring their return.

In a June 8 letter to Harvard President Alan M. Garber ’76, Schatz asked Harvard to provide updates on its compliance with the Native American Graves Protection and Repatriation Act, which requires federally funded museums and agencies to return Native American human remains, funerary objects, sacred objects, and objects of cultural patrimony to their descendants and affiliated tribes.

Harvard was one of 15 museums and universities that received letters from Schatz, the vice chair of the Senate Committee on Indian Affairs. The letters asked each institution to provide updates on its NAGPRA compliance and detail barriers to repatriation.

“It shouldn’t take this long to return Native remains to their communities,” Schatz said in a press release. “Indigenous people have waited long enough. It’s time for these museums and universities to stop the delays and finally do the right thing.”

In his letter to Harvard, Schatz asked Garber to account for the University’s progress on repatriation, including how many ancestors and cultural items have been returned and how many still remain in Harvard’s collections.

He also pressed Garber on whether Harvard had met its pledge to complete the “disposition of ancestors and their associated funerary belongings” by 2025, and asked the University to explain any new allegations of non-compliance since 2023.

Schatz’s letter also asked Harvard to provide an update on a Department of the Interior investigation into the Peabody Museum’s handling of the Woodbury Collection, which includes hair clippings from roughly 700 Native American children at U.S. Indian boarding schools in the 1930s.

He also asked when the University applies the “preponderance of the evidence’’ standard, a legal threshold used to decide whether a claim is more likely than not to be true. Under NAGPRA, the standard can affect disputes over which tribe or Native Hawaiian organization has the strongest claim to ancestors or cultural items.Bottom of Form

Schatz gave Garber 30 calendar days to respond. A Harvard spokesperson did not respond to a request for comment.

The letter marks Schatz’s latest effort to pressure Harvard and other institutions over what he has called slow compliance with NAGPRA.  In a 2024 speech on the Senate floor, Schatz said that more than 70 institutions still held nearly 58,000 Native ancestral remains. He also singled out Harvard as having the third-largest collection of Native ancestral remains and cultural items in the country.

“If you say you’re for equal justice, for doing right by the people of all backgrounds, then act like it,” Schatz said in the speech.

The other institutions that received letters from Schatz include the Ohio History Connection, Illinois State Museum, University of California, Berkeley, Indiana University, University of Tennessee, Knoxville, University of Kentucky, University of Alabama, University of Arizona, University of Florida, University of Missouri, University of Oklahoma, Center for American Archeology, University of Texas at Austin, and Milwaukee Public Museum.

In recent years, Harvard has taken steps to accelerate its repatriation work, including creating a department dedicated to NAGPRA at the Peabody and more than doubling its NAGPRA-dedicated staff.

But the Peabody failed to meet its 2022 pledge to complete the disposition of all ancestors and associated funerary belongings within three years.

As of Dec. 31, 2025, the Peabody had repatriated 5,464 ancestors and more than 20,000 funerary belongings, according to data on its website.  Still, 2,482 ancestors remained in active consultation with tribes, and another 2,161 were pending consultation — leaving 4,643 ancestors in the museum’s possession after the target deadline.

The Peabody has since extended its timeline by two years.  The museum’s NAGPRA dashboard has yet to be updated with June figures, though Harvard has previously said the dashboard would be updated twice a year, in June and December.

https://www.thecrimson.com/article/2026/6/24/schatz-presses-harvard-nagpra/ 

 

Every time I see stories about this, I am imaging diggers looting graves - for money, prestige, titles,  but they are still thieves.... Trace