LandBack: Illinois

The U.S. sold this tribe’s land illegally. It’s now the latest Native group to get its home back

Harvest Public Media | By Héctor Alejandro Arzate and Peter Medlin | June 16, 2025 

Peter Medlin / Harvest Public Media

Raphael Wahwassuck, a member of the Prairie Band Potawatomie’s tribal council and a direct descendant of Chief Shab-eh-nay, said he looks forward to having more youth in the community connect to their land. "A lot of times all you hear is negative stories or stories of defeat," he said. "But now they have something that they can refer to in a positive aspect and show that, yes, good things can happen if you have people that are sincere and want to recognize and understand how we can correct these things."

The United States government promised the Prairie Band Potawatomi Nation about 1,280 acres of Illinois reservation in an 1829 treaty. Instead, the U.S sold all of it illegally to white settlers. The Prairie Band is now the latest tribe in the Midwest and Great Plains to get some of their ancestral home back.

MORE:  https://www.kcur.org/news/2025-06-16/the-u-s-sold-this-tribes-land-illegally-its-now-the-latest-native-group-to-get-its-home-back 

Native ancestors’ return to rest: A paperwork-laden process underway in Illinois

Editor's Note:  My first family in Illinois, my dad's side, probably doesn't even know about this story and the ongoing tragedy, and the required NAGPRA repatriation of bone collections.  

Why would Illinois have so many bones in collections?  Really?  Was it a money-making thing, people digging up my ancestor's graves?  How exactly were these people "caring" for their bones?  By leaving them in boxes?  Charging money to see bones by displaying them?  What kind of morbid sick people would do that?

Many of you who read this blog know terrorized Indigenous people moved and migrated west as more and more people flooded Turtle Island.  When I was in southern Illinois, I was shocked to see so many of Virginia tribal names on various road signs.  It's true Illinois was a landing place for tribes on the run from the growing and murdering colonizers.  Murder?  Oh God, yes.  Read my book Almost Dead Indians and read about the scalp bounties. It's a horror story.

I get sad these looted bones are people who died tragically and now their names are lost.  I get sad reading stories like this about Illinois.  I get sad knowing that the people living there never questioned their own history.  I get sad knowing people "hid" their identity as "Indian" out of fear but spoke about it in whispers to family members who would listen.

I get sad knowing tribes in Illinois also were forced to leave their homelands to escape.

                -Blog Editor Trace L Hentz (adoptee)

 

ProPublica’s series published in that year identified how “America’s museums fail to return Native American human remains,” identifying how Illinois was one of the worst states for repatriation.

Part Two:  https://capitolnewsillinois.com/news/native-ancestors-return-to-rest-a-paperwork-laden-process-underway-in-illinois/

 

ProPublica Updates Its Database of Museums’ and Universities’ Compliance With Federal Repatriation Law

 

The Arizona State Museum in Tucson is among the institutions that have gone through their collections to determine what belonged to the federal government. Credit: Michael Barera/Wikimedia

ProPublica Updates Its Database of Museums’ and Universities’ Compliance With Federal Repatriation Law

by Mary Hudetz

ProPublica is a Pulitzer Prize-winning investigative newsroom. Sign up for The Big Story newsletter to receive stories like this one in your inbox.

Series: The Repatriation Project:The Delayed Return of Native Remains

More in this series

Museums, universities and government agencies continued to make headway last year toward repatriating the remains of thousands of Native American ancestors to tribal nations after decades of slow progress drew national attention.

Nowhere was the shift more apparent than at the U.S. Department of the Interior, the agency charged with enforcing the 1990 Native American Graves Protection and Repatriation Act, which requires items and remains taken from Indigenous gravesites to be returned to tribes.

The department’s subagencies, including the National Park Service and Bureau of Land Management, collectively repatriated the remains of 1,366 Native American ancestors last year, more than a third of the number in its possession at the start of the year. The department’s efforts reflected an awareness, documented in an internal memo in late 2023, that it has a crucial leadership role to play under NAGPRA. Only the Illinois State Museum, an institution that ProPublica has reported on in-depth, came close to repatriating as many, with the transfer of more than 1,320 remains excavated from a single site.

The emphasis on repatriation increased in tandem with reporting by ProPublica in 2023 about failures to comply with the law.

“For too long ancestors and Tribal cultural items have been disconnected from their communities and resting on museum shelves,” Interior officials said in an October 2023 memo.

In response to questions from ProPublica, an Interior spokesperson did not say whether the department’s focus on repatriation will continue under Donald Trump’s second presidency but pointed to new regulations finalized in 2023 that aimed to speed up the process. The regulations, which took effect last year, require institutions to defer more to tribal accounts of their histories and ties to the regions from which remains were removed; the rules also set new deadlines for institutions to comply with the law.

In total, museums, universities and agencies across the country returned more than 10,300 Native American ancestors to tribes last year. The total makes 2024 the third-biggest year for the repatriation of ancestral remains under NAGPRA, according to an online ProPublica database that allows the public to look up the records of more than 600 museums and universities that must comply with the law. Today, ProPublica is updating the database to show repatriation progress through Jan. 6, 2025.

Outside of the Interior Department and the Illinois State Museum, state universities also recorded significant progress. For example, California State University, Sacramento repatriated the remains of 873 Native Americans previously held in its collection.

The progress made last year followed a record number of repatriations in 2023, when institutions returned 18,000 Native American ancestors.

“The progress shows the regulations are working,” said Shannon O’Loughlin, the chief executive for the Association on American Indian Affairs, a nonprofit that advocates for Native American rights.

Nearly 60% of ancestral remains reported as falling under NAGPRA over the years have now been repatriated, but that still leaves at least 90,000 that must be returned to tribes. The Interior Department has acknowledged that many of the human remains it must eventually repatriate have long been unaccounted for in federal inventories. Many of the department’s collections are scattered across the country in university and museum repositories over which the federal government has no oversight, officials said.

Agency staffers also said last year that they would need continued funding for their efforts — a factor that may prove challenging under an administration focused on cutting spending and staffing.

“We need to sustain this work until all of the ancestors that are in DOI control have been repatriated,” one Interior Department employee last year told the National NAGPRA Review Committee, a federal advisory board made up of museum, science and tribal representatives.

More Work to do at the Interior Department

Just over a year ago, the Interior Department had yet to repatriate more than 3,000 ancestors, many of which were excavated in 20th century archaeological digs and infrastructure projects on federal and tribal lands.

The department’s progress repatriating 1,366 Native American ancestors last year comes after top officials sent directives in late 2023 instructing Interior agencies to prioritize the work. Some agencies also set aside more money for repatriation work.

“If you look at previous budgets, we weren’t allocated any funding for NAGPRA,” Tamara Billie, the chief of cultural resource management for the Interior’s Bureau of Indian Affairs, told the National NAGPRA Review Committee last May.

She estimated it could cost several million dollars over the next three to five years for the bureau to repatriate the hundreds of ancestors it has yet to reunite with tribes.

Since Congress passed NAGPRA in 1990, federal staffers have tried to locate the collections excavated on federal and tribal lands, but they have often found that museums and universities transferred their holdings to other institutions without leaving much of a paper trail.

Last year, officials said only a handful of repositories, like the Arizona State Museum in Tucson, had gone through their collections to determine what belonged to the federal government — an early step in the often long repatriation process.

“Some have submitted very detailed, in some cases itemized inventory information,” said Bridget Ambler, with the Bureau of Land Management, during a National NAGPRA Review Committee hearing last year. “But to be honest, for the vast majority we’re not fully aware of what the nature of those collections are and if they include human remains or NAGPRA cultural items.”

Under the new NAGPRA regulations, museums and universities had a deadline of January of this year to hand in lists of items in their facilities that should be included in federal inventories. The requirement resulted in museums and universities submitting roughly 1,000 new notices to the Interior Department, the manager of the National NAGPRA Program said during a recorded training last month. It’s not clear how many ancestral remains are accounted for in those notices.

Progress in Illinois and Ohio

At the Illinois State Museum, which holds the second-largest collection of Native American remains, leadership was already focused on improving their repatriation record. Then, a new state law, along with the Interior Department’s updated regulations, went into effect. The state law, which followed ProPublica’s reporting, gave tribes more control over reburials. It also established a fund for repatriation work, such as paying for tribal members to travel to the museum to consult on collections, and for the reburials of remains.

Many of the remains held by the state museum came from a burial mound dug up in the 1920s by Don Dickson, a chiropractor. He turned the burial site into a roadside attraction. Over the years, Native Americans, whose tribes had been forcibly removed to other states, protested the exhibit that later became the Dickson Mounds Museum, a branch of the Illinois State Museum.

The state eventually closed the burial mounds exhibit, but the museum kept the human remains, maintaining that they could not be traced to living people and therefore would not be repatriated. That was until this past year.

On Feb. 24, 2024, the Illinois State Museum published a notice in the Federal Register saying that 1,325 ancestors and thousands of items buried with them were available to tribes for repatriation. As of the start of this year, the Illinois State Museum held the remains of an estimated 5,800 Native American ancestors.

Only the Ohio History Connection now holds more unrepatriated human remains, over 7,900 in total, according to federal data. In the roughly three decades prior to 2024, the Columbus institution had returned fewer than 20 ancestors to tribes. But it showed signs of progress last year in making more than 150 ancestral remains, or roughly 2% of its skeletal collection reported under NAGPRA, available to be repatriated. In an email, a spokesperson for the museum said it expects to complete more repatriations in consultation with tribal partners, who have asked the museum “not to rush this critical work.”

As in Illinois, the Ohio institution’s collections largely originate from centuries-old burial mounds in a state where tribal nations were forcibly removed.

“It Is Time for the State to Take Repatriation Seriously”

More state support for repatriation also could be on the horizon in Arizona. Last month, Gov. Katie Hobbs announced she would ask lawmakers for $7 million to support repatriation efforts at the Arizona State Museum.

The museum on the University of Arizona campus in Tucson is a repository for the state and federal government. Over the years, records show, it has conducted repatriations but has yet to return more than half of its collection reported under NAGPRA — the remains of 2,600 ancestors total — to tribes mostly in the Southwest.

“The hard-working staff at the museum have done their best to repatriate human remains and artifacts to tribes without any significant financial investment from the state,” Hobbs, a Democrat, said in prepared remarks to tribal leaders last month. “It is time for that to change. It is time for the state to take repatriation seriously.”

One of the museums’ challenges in trying to reach full compliance with the law stems from the fact that it continues to receive human remains because of its status as a state repository. Arizona medical examiners have sent the museum human remains that they come across in their investigations, including the ancestors of Native Americans. In some instances, looters have surrendered items and bones unearthed from graves, according to Jim Watson, associate director at the Arizona State Museum. (Looting violates federal laws.)

“We will receive an individual or remains in the mail or objects from private citizens, particularly when individuals pass away and their relatives are going through their stuff,” he told the NAGPRA Review Committee last spring. “They find a box in the garage or the attic, for example, and it says, ‘from Arizona,’ ‘artifacts from Arizona,’ ‘artifacts from Phoenix’ or ‘ancestral remains.’ So, they will ship them to the University of Arizona, often without contacting us first.”

He estimates the museum receives such packages two to three times per year.

Ash Ngu contributed data analysis.

Does Your Local Museum or University Still Have Native American Remains? 

SOURCE: 

https://www.propublica.org/article/native-american-remains-returned-repatriation-nagpra

Sacred Mound Returned to Osage Nation

 So much destruction of our history, along with looting and worse... Trace

Annotated image of Sugarloaf Mound from the Heckenberg Family Scrapbook. Photograph by Jennifer Colten. (photo/Courtesy of Joan Heckenberg.)

By Kaili Berg

November 22, 2024

Sugarloaf Mound, the last remaining intact Mississippian mound is one step closer to returning to the Osage Nation.

Once part of “Mound City,” a network of over 100 earthen structures constructed by Native Americans between 800 and 1450 AD, Sugarloaf Mound is the sole surviving structure to a civilization nearly erased by colonization and urban development. 

Bottom of Form

The Mississippian culture, responsible for building Sugarloaf Mound and others, was one of the most advanced pre-Columbian civilizations in North America. At its height, it included Cahokia, a massive urban center just across the Mississippi River in present-day Illinois. 

Cahokia, known for its towering Monk Mound, still the largest structure in the Americas, was home to an estimated 20,000 people during its peak around 1100 AD. 

Sugarloaf and Big Mound were among the most prominent structures in what is now St. Louis. These signal mounds were positioned along the Mississippi River, allowing communication with Cahokia via smoke signals. 

The mounds of St. Louis stood as landmarks when the city was founded in 1764, even drawing visits from European royalty.  However, settlers soon repurposed the structures, demolishing them to make way for roads, railroads, and the 1904 World’s Fair. 

According to AP News, bones from Big Mound were reportedly discarded into the Mississippi River as the structure was dismantled.  By the early 20th century, only Sugarloaf Mound remained. 

In 2009, the Osage Nation purchased a portion of Sugarloaf Mound and began stabilizing the site.  A pivotal moment came recently when 86-year-old Joan Heckenberg, who has lived on the mound for 81 years, agreed to sell her property to the Osage Nation. 

Once Heckenberg moves or passes away, this part of the mound will officially return to the tribe.  However, a house owned by Kappa Psi, a pharmaceutical fraternity, remains on the mound, and the fraternity has yet to commit to selling the property, AP News reported. 

Efforts to rematriate Sugarloaf Mound gained momentum with the 2023 Counterpublic triennial, a public art exhibition that turned the site into a symbol of Indigneous homecoming.  Public programming led by the artist collective New Red Order, curator Risa Puleo, and the Osage Nation brought visibility to the sacred mound and its importance. 

The city of St. Louis has also taken steps to recognize the mounds’ significance. Alderman Cara Spencer announced plans for a resolution in January 2024 to formally acknowledge Osage sovereignty over the site.

Long-term plans include developing a cultural and interpretive center at Sugarloaf Mound, which overlooks the Mississippi River a few miles south of downtown. 

For the Osage Nation, reclaiming Sugarloaf Mound is more than preserving a sacred site, it is a step toward sovereignty and the restoration of their heritage. 

“To be able to at least salvage one mound in St. Louis, on the west side of the Mississippi River — it means a lot to us, to regain our heritage,” Andrea Hunter, director of the Osage Nation Historic Preservation Office, told AP News. 

 

ICWA violations in Illinois?

Notice Violation Case out of Illinois

Posted on September 10, 2014 by Kate Fort at TURTLE TALK

That’s right–out of Illinois. According to Westlaw (ICWA & “Indian Child Welfare Act”), there are a grand total of 11 ICWA cases from the Illinois appellate courts.

Here is the most recent. The appeals court reversed and remanded due to ICWA notice violations (for one child–the other was not the biological child of the father):

At the dispositional hearing on April 26, 2011, the trial court found Dwight to be unfit and awarded guardianship of N.L. to DCFS. Among the reports submitted for the court’s consideration was a social history report, dated March 23, 2011, indicating that Dwight is a registered member of the Minnesota Chippewa Tribe, White Earth Reservation (the Tribe).

***
The trial court questioned the State about the children’s eligibility for tribal registry and was advised that the State had already received notices that both minors were ineligible for registry with the Tribe. The State was ordered to provide documentation of its compliance with the statute at the status hearing on December 18. No documents addressing the issue of tribal registry for the minors were submitted at that or any subsequent proceeding until the hearing on the State’s motion to supplement the record during the pendency of this appeal.

***
The State’s Tribe letters suggest that the Tribe was provided with the minors’ names and dates of birth and imply that Dwight’s name was provided with reference to N.L. The State’s Tribe letter for N.L is dated September 16, 2011, and that for M.L. is dated February 25, 2013. In its order granting the State’s motion to supplement the record, the court expressed concern with Dwight’s solicitation of new evidence while the case was on appeal. However, many of the documents the State was allowed to include with its supplementation were dated after the termination hearing and after Dwight’s notice of appeal.
Dwight filed a motion with this court to supplement the record with his own Tribe letter– from the same person who had signed the State’s letters– showing that N.L. and M.L. were eligible for tribal membership. He acquired this letter as a result of his solicitation for evidence related to the appeal. This court allowed Dwight to submit his Tribe letter with his case pending our decision of the propriety of its inclusion in the record. Dwight’s Tribe letter states that the minors are eligible for tribal membership and suggests that the Tribe was provided with the dates of birth for both minors, the correct spelling of N.L.’s name, and the names and dates of birth for both Dwight and Emily.

For reference, here’s the list of the Illinois appellate ICWA cases:

1. In re N.L. Appellate Court of Illinois, Third District.    September 09, 2014    — N.E.3d —-    2014 IL App (3d) 140172
2. In re K.T. Appellate Court of Illinois, Third District.    June 07, 2013    2013 IL App (3d) 120969    990 N.E.2d 1260
3. In re D.D., Jr. Appellate Court of Illinois, Third District.    November 05, 2008    385 Ill.App.3d 1053    897 N.E.2d 917
4. In re H.D. Appellate Court of Illinois, Fourth District.    September 30, 2003    343 Ill.App.3d 483    797 N.E.2d 1112
5. In re Cari B. Appellate Court of Illinois, Second District.    February 01, 2002    327 Ill.App.3d 743    763 N.E.2d 917
6. In re C.N. Supreme Court of Illinois.    May 24, 2001    196 Ill.2d 181    752 N.E.2d 1030
7. In re M.S. Appellate Court of Illinois, Second District.    February 05, 1999    302 Ill.App.3d 998    706 N.E.2d 524
8. In re Adoption of S.S. Supreme Court of Illinois.    October 19, 1995    167 Ill.2d 250    657 N.E.2d 935
9. In re Adoption of S.S. Appellate Court of Illinois, Second District.    October 22, 1993    252 Ill.App.3d 33    622 N.E.2d 832
10. Matter of T.I.S. Appellate Court of Illinois, First District, Fourth Division.    December 31, 1991    224 Ill.App.3d 475    586 N.E.2d 690
11. In Interest of Armell Appellate Court of Illinois, First District, Second Division.    January 16, 1990    194 Ill.App.3d 31    550 N.E.2d 1060