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The Repatriation Database Data from Jan. 6, 2025 Wyoming

Fremont County, Wyoming

Institutions reported making 91% of the remains of 45 Native Americans taken from Fremont County, Wyoming available for return to tribes under NAGPRA.

remains of 41 Native Americans made available for return to tribes
remains of at least 4 Native Americans not made available for return

There are six institutions that reported Native American remains taken from Fremont County, Wyoming.

InstitutionRemains Not Made Available for ReturnRemains Made Available for Return% of Remains Made Available for Return
U.S. Department of the Interior2250%
Mercyhurst Univ.100%
Natural History Museum of Utah100%
Fremont County Coroner01100%
Harvard University035100%
University of Wyoming03100%
Under the Native American Graves Protection and Repatriation Act, when an institution establishes a connection between tribes and remains, it must publish a list of the tribes eligible to make a repatriation claim. The remains are then made available for return to the tribe(s). Once a tribal claim is made, physical transfer may occur. Many remains have been physically returned to tribes, but data on this is spotty because the law does not require institutions to report when these transfers occur.

Institutions made Native American remains taken from Fremont County, Wyoming available for return to 34 tribes.

Institutions often make remains available for return to multiple tribes, so the amount of remains listed below may be counted for more than one tribe.
TribeRemains Made Available for Return to Tribe
Northern Arapaho Tribe of the Wind River Reservation, Wyoming25
Eastern Shoshone Tribe of the Wind River Reservation, Wyoming15
Shoshone-Bannock Tribes of the Fort Hall Reservation5
Fort Belknap Indian Community of the Fort Belknap Reservation of Montana4
Apache Tribe of Oklahoma3
Assiniboine and Sioux Tribes of the Fort Peck Indian Reservation, Montana3
Blackfeet Tribe of the Blackfeet Indian Reservation of Montana3
Cheyenne River Sioux Tribe of the Cheyenne River Reservation, South Dakota3
Cheyenne and Arapaho Tribes, Oklahoma3
Comanche Nation, Oklahoma3
Crow Creek Sioux Tribe of the Crow Creek Reservation, South Dakota3
Crow Tribe of Montana3
Keweenaw Bay Indian Community, Michigan3
Lower Brule Sioux Tribe of the Lower Brule Reservation, South Dakota3
Nez Perce Tribe3
Northern Cheyenne Tribe of the Northern Cheyenne Indian Reservation, Montana3
Oglala Sioux Tribe3
Rosebud Sioux Tribe of the Rosebud Indian Reservation, South Dakota3
Santee Sioux Nation, Nebraska3
Standing Rock Sioux Tribe of North and South Dakota3
Three Affiliated Tribes of the Fort Berthold Reservation, North Dakota3
White Mountain Apache Tribe of the Fort Apache Reservation, Arizona3
Big Pine Paiute Tribe of the Owens Valley2
Bishop Paiute Tribe2
Duckwater Shoshone Tribe of the Duckwater Reservation, Nevada2
Ely Shoshone Tribe of Nevada2
Fort McDermitt Paiute and Shoshone Tribes of the Fort McDermitt Indian Reservation, Nevada and Oregon2
Lone Pine Paiute-Shoshone Tribe2
Northwestern Band of Shoshoni Nation2
Paiute-Shoshone Tribe of the Fallon Reservation and Colony, Nevada2
Shoshone-Paiute Tribes of the Duck Valley Reservation, Nevada2
Te-Moak Tribe of Western Shoshone Indians of Nevada2
Timbisha Shoshone Tribe2
Yomba Shoshone Tribe of the Yomba Reservation, Nevada2
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About the Data

This tool presents a dataset maintained by the National Park Service containing all the Native American human remains and associated funerary objects that institutions have reported to the federal government under the Native American Graves Protection and Repatriation Act. The dataset includes information about the state and county where remains and objects were taken from, which institutions hold them and whether they have been made available for return to tribes.

The data is self-reported by institutions. The amount of unrepatriated Native American remains reported by institutions is a minimum estimate of individuals and institutions frequently adjust these numbers when they reinventory groups of remains. Some institutions that are subject to NAGPRA have also entirely failed to report the remains in their possession. As a result, the numbers provided are best taken as estimates. The actual number and geographic scope of what’s held by publicly funded institutions is larger than what is presently documented.

ProPublica supplemented this dataset with information about cultural affiliation and disposition to specific tribes by systematically parsing the text of Notices of Inventory Completion published in the Federal Register. An additional dataset from the Department of Housing and Urban Development, the Tribal Directory Assessment Tool, was used for the section on remains not made available for return from counties that each tribe has indicated interest in to the federal government.

Institution location and tribal headquarters location information was provided by National NAGPRA. The location of some groups that are not federally recognized was provided through research by ProPublica.

Institutions that are part of a larger entity are grouped. (For example, the Mesa Verde National Park is part of the U.S. Department of the Interior.)

Institutions that have not submitted information to the federal government are not listed. The Smithsonian Institution is not listed because its repatriation process falls under the National Museum of the American Indian Act and it is not required to publicly report its holdings with the same detail as institutions subject to NAGPRA.

If you work for an institution and would like to provide comment on your institution’s repatriation efforts, please email [email protected]. If you think the data is incorrect or have a data request, please get in touch. We are aware of some issues with the accuracy of location information and tribes mistakenly being identified for disposition of Native American remains in published notices.

If you want to share something else with ProPublica, we’d like to hear from you.

If you have questions about implementing or complying with the Native American Graves Protection and Repatriation Act, get in touch with National NAGPRA or the NAGPRA Community of Practice.

We use the word “tribes” to refer to all groups that institutions made Native American remains available to under NAGPRA. This includes tribes, nations, bands, pueblos, communities, Native Alaskan villages, Native Hawaiian organizations and non-federally recognized groups.

Data sources from Department of the Interior, National Park Service, National NAGPRA Program, the Federal Register, Department of Housing and Development, Tribal Directory Assessment Tool