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The Repatriation Database Data from Jan. 6, 2025 California

Mono County, California

Institutions reported making 67% of the remains of six Native Americans taken from Mono County, California available for return to tribes under NAGPRA.

remains of 4 Native Americans made available for return to tribes
remains of at least 2 Native Americans not made available for return

There are four institutions that reported Native American remains taken from Mono County, California.

InstitutionRemains Not Made Available for ReturnRemains Made Available for Return% of Remains Made Available for Return
University of California, Berkeley200%
Santa Barbara Museum of Natural History01100%
U.S. Department of Agriculture02100%
University of California, Los Angeles, Fowler Museum of Cultural History01100%
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 Mono County, California available for return to 36 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
Utu Utu Gwaitu Paiute Tribe of the Benton Paiute Reservation, California4
Bishop Paiute Tribe2
Bridgeport Indian Colony2
Big Pine Paiute Tribe of the Owens Valley1
Burns Paiute Tribe1
Cedarville Rancheria, California1
Coleville Onadika (Salt Eaters) in Antelope Valley1
Confederated Tribes of the Goshute Reservation, Nevada and Utah1
Confederated Tribes of the Warm Springs Reservation of Oregon1
Duckwater Shoshone Tribe of the Duckwater Reservation, Nevada1
Eastern Shoshone Tribe of the Wind River Reservation, Wyoming1
Ely Shoshone Tribe of Nevada1
Fort Bidwell Indian Community of the Fort Bidwell Reservation of California1
Fort Independence Indian Community of Paiute Indians of the Fort Independence Reservation, California1
Fort McDermitt Paiute and Shoshone Tribes of the Fort McDermitt Indian Reservation, Nevada and Oregon1
Las Vegas Tribe of Paiute Indians of the Las Vegas Indian Colony, Nevada1
Lone Pine Paiute-Shoshone Tribe1
Lovelock Paiute Tribe of the Lovelock Indian Colony, Nevada1
Moapa Band of Paiute Indians of the Moapa River Indian Reservation, Nevada1
Mono Lake Kutzadika Indian Community1
Paiute Indian Tribe of Utah1
Paiute-Shoshone Tribe of the Fallon Reservation and Colony, Nevada1
Pyramid Lake Paiute Tribe of the Pyramid Lake Reservation, Nevada1
Reno-Sparks Indian Colony, Nevada1
Shoshone-Bannock Tribes of the Fort Hall Reservation1
Shoshone-Paiute Tribes of the Duck Valley Reservation, Nevada1
Skull Valley Band of Goshute Indians of Utah1
Summit Lake Paiute Tribe of Nevada1
Susanville Indian Rancheria, California1
Te-Moak Tribe of Western Shoshone Indians of Nevada1
Timbisha Shoshone Tribe1
Walker River Paiute Tribe of the Walker River Reservation, Nevada1
Washoe Tribe of Nevada & California1
Winnemucca Indian Colony of Nevada1
Yerington Paiute Tribe of the Yerington Colony and Campbell Ranch, Nevada1
Yomba Shoshone Tribe of the Yomba Reservation, Nevada1
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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