They Took Us Away

They Took Us Away
click image to see more and read more

it's free

click

How to Use this Blog

BOOZHOO! We've amassed tons of information and important history on this blog since 2010. If you have a keyword, use the search box below. Also check out the reference section above. If you have a question or need help searching, use the contact form at the bottom of the blog.



We want you to use BOOKSHOP to buy books! (the editor will earn a small amount of money or commission. (we thank you) (that is our disclaimer statement)

This is a blog. It is not a peer-reviewed journal, not a sponsored publication... WE DO NOT HAVE ADS or earn MONEY from this website. The ideas, news and thoughts posted are sourced… or written by the editor or contributors.

EMAIL ME: tracelara@pm.me (outlook email is gone) THANK YOU CHI MEGWETCH!

SEARCH

Showing posts with label repatriation. Show all posts
Showing posts with label repatriation. Show all posts

Sunday, July 26, 2026

NAGPRA update

In line with growing trend of repatriation, UC Berkeley to return cultural artifacts to Agua Caliente Band of Cahuilla Indians

nagpra_William Yau_staff.jpg

Since January 2026, UC Berkeley has issued eight notices of repatriation or inventory completion in the Federal Register. 

UC Berkeley is working to return 36 lots of artifacts that are culturally, traditionally or historically linked to the Agua Caliente Band of Cahuilla Indians. 

The repatriation of these artifacts will begin Aug. 7, and artifacts will be returned to the Agua Caliente tribe of the Agua Caliente Indian Reservation near Palm Springs. 

According to a Federal Register notice published July 8, the cultural objects include “worked stone, faunal remains, and ceramic fragments.” 

“These items are far more than museum collections — they embody the history, traditions, and cultural identity of our people and deserve to be cared for by the descendants and community to whom they belong,” said Jeff L. Grubbe, tribal chairman of the Agua Caliente Band of Cahuilla Indians, in a statement. 

Repatriation takes place in accordance with the Native American Graves Protection and Repatriation Act, which requires institutions that receive federal funding to repatriate Native American cultural artifacts and remains. 

Since January 2026, UC Berkeley has issued eight notices of repatriation or inventory completion in the Federal Register. In 2025 alone, campus issued 22 notices, according to UC Berkeley’s NAGPRA website. In 2024 and 2023, that number was much lower, sitting at nine and 12, respectively. 

Every other year of notices involving UC Berkeley recorded in the Federal Register saw at most 10 repatriation or completion notices.  

Institutions issue a notice of inventory completion in the Federal Register if they have identified a cultural affiliation of human remains and the relevant funerary objects. Notices of intended repatriation are issued if an institution has received a repatriation request for unassociated funerary objects or others of cultural significance. 

👇

Tuesday, July 14, 2026

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/

 **

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

Tuesday, June 23, 2026

They need to come home #NAGPRA


In 1990, the Native American Graves Protection and Repatriation Act — or NAGPRA — required institutions to return human remains and burial objects

EAST LANSING, Mich. (News 10) - The clock is ticking for universities and museums to return thousands of Native American remains and artifacts from their collections.

In 1990, the Native American Graves Protection and Repatriation Act — or NAGPRA — required institutions to return human remains and burial objects to their tribes of origin.

NAGPRA was updated in 2024 and now requires institutions to finish returning Native American artifacts by 2029.

“There were many years when there was a provision in the law about being culturally unidentifiable. And so, this was a substantial barrier for tribes to achieve repatriation,” said Matthew Bussler. “The January 2024 new NAGPRA rule that came out removed that provision, and so that has made this a lot more achievable for tribes to have that work accomplished.”

While Michigan has made progress, thousands of ancestral remains and artifacts in the state still haven’t been returned.

ProPublica shared the following data from its Reparation Database Report:

In Michigan, of the more than 3,200 reported ancestral remains taken from Michigan:

  • 2,638 Native American remains were made available for return
  • At least 609 Native Americans were not made available for return

The University of Michigan Museum of Anthropology, with the 25th largest collection of unrepatriated Native American remains in the U.S., says it has made 54% of the more than 1,600 remains taken from the state available for return:

  • 904 remains available for return
  • 773 remains not made available for return

The University of Michigan has made 2,478 associated funerary objects available for return out of more than 11,200.

Michigan State University has made 100% of the 544 Native American remains and 84,900 funerary objects available for return to tribes.

“We have a really good unit on campus... that our doing the best with the resources they have to make sure that they get those ceremonial items, those cultural items, and those ancestral remains back to our tribes,” said Dr. Kevin Leonard, the Interim Director of the Native American Institute at Michigan State University. “I would like to say we are ahead of the curve, but there’s still work that we have to do.”

Dr. Leonard describes seeing Native American ancestral artifacts in museums like going to a cemetery, digging up a grave, and taking whatever you want from inside.

“They’ve basically grave robbed,” Leonard said. “You’ve disturbed their resting sites and taken things that aren’t yours. Those are our ceremonial and our funeral objects, and they need to be in our communities, and those remains of our ancestors need to be returned so they can be laid to rest and aren’t in a box or a display case in a museum.”

Dr. Leonard encourages people to speak with the native community more often. He said, “you don’t have to dig our grave sites” to know the history.

If institutions fail to comply or meet the NAGPRA 2029 deadline, they could face financial penalties.

SOURCE:  https://www.wilx.com/2026/06/18/they-need-come-home-museums-facing-2029-deadline-return-native-artifacts-remains/ 

Friday, April 10, 2026

Living with Treaties Conference

 IMPORTANT TO KNOW!

Monday, December 8, 2025

Is the return of 62 Indigenous cultural belongings a big step for truth ...

Sixty-two Indigenous cultural items previously held in Vatican museums and vaults for a century are being repatriated to Canada.  Cynthia Wesley-Esquimaux, Chair on Truth and Reconciliation at Lakehead University in Thunder Bay, Ont., explains why she’s ‘a bit conflicted’ about the return of these cultural belongings.
 

Sunday, September 21, 2025

6 Inuit teens go on a journey to connect with their past (Short version)

Remember this: It’s a stark reminder: Sometimes the best way to kill something and rob it of its history is to place it in a museum.

Meet six kids from a small community in the Arctic who felt disconnected from their Inuvialuit identity — until they went on a journey to connect with their past.  The students teamed up with CBC Kids News to document a trip they took to see their ancestors' artwork and artifacts on display in museums across the country.  They discovered a connection that runs deeper than they thought.

 

LINK: https://www.cbc.ca/player/play/video/9.6906463 

Wednesday, August 6, 2025

LONG TIME COMING!

 

 

The Pennsylvania Historical and Museum Commission has some 908 individual remains and 79,628 funerary objects in its collection, which are subject to the Native American Graves Protection and Repatriation Act (NAGPRA).

“We never ceded or relinquished our dead. They were stolen,” James Riding In, a retired Arizona State University professor who is Pawnee, has said of the unreturned remains.

There are 574 federally recognized tribes and approximately 400 additional tribes that are not federally recognized.

 READ MORE:

https://www.pennlive.com/news/2025/08/pa-state-museum-closes-native-american-exhibit-returns-1000s-of-artifacts-under-federal-law.html 

Army Conducts Eighth Year of Disinterment and Return of Native American Children at Carlisle Barracks

The U.S. Army will continue its mission to reunite Native American families with their ancestors through the eighth year of disinterment efforts at Carlisle Barracks, beginning on September 5, 2025.

The individuals scheduled for disinterment include Wallace Perryman of the Seminole Nation of Oklahoma, along with Belle Cahoe, Wash E. He, Tabitha Carroll, Jane Lumpfoot, Leah Road Traveler, Percy Whitebear, George Harrison, Charles Whiteshield, Matavito Horse, Nannie Little Robe, Dora Morning, Louise Thunder, Giles Hands, Ruben Tanpeds, Henry Morning, William Sammers, Abe Lincoln, and Elsie Davis—all from the Cheyenne and Arapaho Tribes.   

READ MORE: https://nativenewsonline.net/currents/army-conducts-eighth-year-of-disinterment-and-return-of-native-american-children-at-carlisle-barracks

Wednesday, July 9, 2025

Univ. of Michigan Museum starts return process for remains of 10 Native Americans

 

The University of Michigan museum holds the 25th largest collection of unrepatriated Native American remains in the nation. 
 

READ:  https://www.detroitnews.com/story/news/local/michigan/2025/07/09/um-museum-will-return-the-remains-of-10-native-americans-to-tribes/84422824007/

I remember reading about diggers in Wisconsin in the early 1900s who desecrated, destroyed and robbed mounds - they called themselves anthropologists. And sold what they stole... Trace

Thursday, April 24, 2025

University of Iowa praised by tribal leaders for repatriation work and collaboration

Indigenous leaders say the University of Iowa has become a model for respectful repatriation through decades of direct action, consultation, and a continued commitment to returning Native American human remains to their tribes of origin.

 
Ava Neumaier
The Old Capitol is seen in Iowa City on Wednesday, March 26, 2025.

More than three decades after the passage of a federal law mandating the return of Native American remains, the University of Iowa has emerged as a national leader — making nearly all of its holdings available to tribes.

In 1990, Congress passed the Native American Graves Protection and Repatriation Act, or NAGPRA, a landmark law that compelled museums and universities to return thousands of stolen Native American remains and cultural items to their tribe of origin.

Over a decade prior, Iowa passed the Iowa Burials Protection Act of 1976, the first law in the nation to protect ancient Native American burial sites. It required that all discovered human remains be reported to the state archaeologist and allowed for their return to tribal communities — setting a precedent for repatriation long before federal law mandated it.

In response, the UI established an Indian Advisory Council to the Office of the State Archaeologist, creating a formal role for tribal voices in decisions about ancient human remains.  Today, Suzanne Wanatee Buffalo, the daughter of founding member Don Wanatee, continues to serve on the council and said the UI has played a part in reshaping the relationship between the field of archeology and U.S. tribes.

Map by Marandah Mangra-Dutcher.

“Of all the institutions that the tribes deal with, the University of Iowa has served as the template for how you do it right,” Wanatee Buffalo said.

Wanatee Buffalo said in the 1980s and 1990s, many Native Americans viewed the field of archeology as one that was inherently predatory and more interested in dealing with deceased Indigenous people than living ones.

“Fast forward to today, and we do have young people in our tribal communities who are archeologists and anthropologists,” Wanatee Buffalo said. “Because of laws like NAGPRA and laws like what Iowa passed, we have the opportunity to learn from each other and improve and increase the amount of information and education so everybody gets a more complete sense of the history of this land we call Iowa.”

As historic preservation director for the Meskwaki Tribe, Jonathan Buffalo has played a leading role for decades in reburying human remains returned to the tribe by the UI and other institutions.

“In the ‘90s, we decided that when we rebury human remains, we would not conduct any funeral ceremony,” Buffalo said. “We believe those people already received their funeral, and it wasn’t up to us to add anything to that.”

Buffalo said the reburial process is respectful and simple, as the human remains are returned to the earth with a brief expression of sympathy for the disturbance and a promise of respectful reburial.

Due to the challenges of determining the exact tribal origin of some remains, Buffalo said the Meskwaki Tribe has taken on the responsibility of reburying not only confirmed Meskwaki ancestors but also remains whose tribal affiliations are unclear.

“When it’s non-Meskwakis, we’re still respectful. We don’t say too much because we don’t know what language they spoke, what customs they had, so we’re just putting them back to the earth,” Buffalo said.

For decades, looters have deliberately targeted Native American burial sites, desecrating sacred ground in search of remains and artifacts.  One such incident in 1971 — when the remains of white settlers uncovered during road construction in Glenwood were reburied while the remains of a Native American woman and her child were sent for study — prompted Yankton Sioux activist Maria Pearson to demand change, ultimately leading to Iowa’s 1976 Burials Protection Act.

Buffalo said the Meskwaki Tribe is familiar with such incidents.

“As recently as the 1900s, there were people coming into the settlement to raid our graves,” Buffalo said. “That’s [why] today we don’t talk about our cemeteries, their location to be well known.”

NAGPRA and Indiana University Update

 IU making progress on repatriating Native American remains, cultural artifacts

canagpra040825.png

Two years after a ProPublica investigation found Indiana University (IU) held the fifth largest collection of unrepatriated Native American remains in the US, the IU office responsible for returning those remains and cultural items has completed four more repatriations. 

The IU Native American Graves Protection and Repatriation Act office works to review and return the thousands of Native American remains and funerary objects still in IU collections. It does so in accordance with NAGPRA, a 1990 law requiring federally funded institutions to repatriate the human remains or items held in their collections to their tribal nations of origin. 

A ProPublica report updated in January says that IU’s original holdings included 6,100 remains, and IU has completed inventories, the first step towards eventual repatriation, for 1,640 of those remains. Jayne-Leigh Thomas, director of the IU NAGPRA office, said the original number was closer to 5,200 remains, and the office has repatriated from that number. 

NAGPRA seeks to address centuries during which museums, federal agencies and universities routinely dug up Native American gravesites for display or for research that often amounted to pseudoscience. This desecration of sacred areas and gravesites contributed to the attempted eradication of Native American cultural practices.   

IU obtained its collections through donations from museums, universities or private donors, or through excavations beginning in the 1930s. 

An IDS investigation in 2023 found a loophole in NAGPRA allowed IU, along with other institutions across the country, to go decades without repatriating any of the remains in its collections. Current and former faculty alleged at the time that IU avoided the responsibility and pushed the work to untrained anthropology faculty with full-time research and teaching responsibilities.  

Updates to NAGPRA regulations closed that loophole in 2010. Three years later IU hired Thomas, who has a PhD in Archeology from the University of Edinburgh, to direct its NAGPRA office.  

Since then, ProPublica says the office has completed inventories listing possibly affiliated tribal nations for 1,640 of the remains in its collection. 

Thomas said those lists could include upwards of 50 tribal nations for a given set of holdings or remains. 

Once an institution determines the possible tribal affiliation of a set of ancestral remains or cultural items, regulations require institutions to consult — virtually or in person — with representatives from tribal nations. But that can take time. 

“Consultation requires the development of a relationship,” Thomas said. “That's not something that can happen overnight.” 

In 2019, Martha Only A Chief, the NAGPRA coordinator with the Pawnee Nation of Oklahoma, visited IU to determine the affiliation of several cultural items in IU’s collections. She said the in-person consultation allowed her to fully assess whether those items were Pawnee.  

“There are certain items where, when they have an inventory, it’ll just say rattles,” Only A Chief said. “Well, a rattle can mean a number of different things, but ours, we have certain rattles that are used in our sacred ceremonies or sacred dances, and some of them that we still use.” 

That consultation resulted in IU repatriating 27 cultural items to the Pawnee Nation last November, allowing Only A Chief to bring certain items back for eventual display in the Museum of the Pawnee Nation, where tribal members can see them for the first time. 

“The reason, I feel, for my job, is to bring these items back so our people could see them, and our, you know, our children and grandchildren after that,” Only A Chief said. 

Thomas said during the consultation process she accommodates the needs of tribal representatives, who may be too busy to start new repatriations or accelerate existing projects.  

Only A Chief said the workload for tribal nations has increased since January last year, when revised NAGPRA regulations went into effect and added multiple new deadlines for institutions to file inventories and contact tribal representatives.  

Since then, the number of institutions reaching out for consultations has skyrocketed. Two years ago, Only A Chief was handling two to five consultations. Right now she’s handling 34, with more requests waiting in her inbox.  

Thomas also said tribal nations also may need time to find reburial land for holdings that include ancestral remains, so that collections can be removed from campus and reburied once repatriated. Thomas said she doesn’t try to rush that process. 

“It would be disrespectful to treat the ancestral remains as just objects you're trying to hurry up and get out the door,” Thomas said. 

As an enrolled member of the Chaui band of the Pawnee Nation, Only A Chief said she has helped rebury the remains of her ancestors in Nebraska, on land owned by the Pawnee Nation. 

“They don't have to be on that shelf in that box in plastic, or however they were before I was able to take possession and bring them to Nebraska and put them back into Mother Earth,” Only A Chief said. “That's what gratifies me.” 

Friday, February 21, 2025

Why Repatriation Matters

By  

As an archaeologist, you picture yourself traveling to some remote location, digging into the ground, and returning to a lab in a university or museum to study the remains of past civilizations, with hopes of answering important questions.

In contrast, I’ve often found myself working to return those remains to their rightful cultures.  Repatriation is the process of returning ancestral human remains and important objects to descendant populations.   Since the passing of the National Museum of the American Indian Act in 1989 and the Native American Graves Protection and Repatriation Act in 1990, it has become an increasingly important part of archaeological practice, yet about 110,000 ancestors remain in collections.

This work is about more than legal obligations.  To many researchers such as myself, it is a matter of human rights.

When first enacted, these laws were controversial among archaeologists. Much of this anxiety stemmed from worries about losing access to research opportunities. Some concerns were shaped by legal battles surrounding the remains of “Kennewick Man,” whom Indigenous people refer to as the “Ancient One.” This man’s remains were found in Washington state in 1996 and dated to over 8,000 years ago. Scientists won the legal right to study them, in opposition to local tribal nations’ requests, until a 2016 law returned the remains of the individual to those groups. 

KEEP READING: https://theconversation.com/repatriation-to-indigenous-groups-is-more-than-law-its-human-rights-an-archaeologist-describes-the-day-that-lesson-hit-home-247763


Happy Visitors!

WRITTEN BY HUMANS!

WRITTEN BY HUMANS!

Blog Archive

Featured Post

Your History Class Was a F*cking Lie | #NOMOAR

  Your History Class Was a F*cking Lie by Sean Sherman (Or: How the American Educational System Has Always Been a Racist Propaganda Program...


Native Circles

Native Circles
click logo for podcasts!

Most READ Posts

Bookshop

You are not alone

You are not alone

To Veronica Brown

Veronica, we adult adoptees are thinking of you today and every day. We will be here when you need us. Your journey in the adopted life has begun, nothing can revoke that now, the damage cannot be undone. Be courageous, you have what no adoptee before you has had; a strong group of adult adoptees who know your story, who are behind you and will always be so.

Diane Tells His Name


click photo

Lost Birds on Al Jazeera Fault Lines

Lost Birds on Al Jazeera Fault Lines
click to read and listen about Trace, Diane, Julie and Suzie

NO MORE STOLEN SISTERS

NO MORE STOLEN SISTERS
click image

ADOPTION TRUTH

As the single largest unregulated industry in the United States, adoption is viewed as a benevolent action that results in the formation of “forever families.”
The truth is that it is a very lucrative business with a known sales pitch. With profits last estimated at over $1.44 billion dollars a year, mothers who consider adoption for their babies need to be very aware that all of this promotion clouds the facts and only though independent research can they get an accurate account of what life might be like for both them and their child after signing the adoption paperwork.

Original Birth Certificate Map in the USA

Google Followers