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
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