Ottawa County, Michigan Repatriation Records — NAGPRA Database

The Repatriation Database Data from Nov. 29, 2023 Michigan

There are four institutions that reported Native American remains taken from Ottawa County, Michigan.

Institution	Remains Made Available for Return	% of Remains Made Available for Return
Besser Museum for Northeast Michigan	1	100%
Grand Rapids Public Museum	3	100%
Grand Valley State University	74	100%
University of Michigan Museum of Anthropology	12	100%

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 Ottawa County, Michigan available for return to 50 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.

Tribe	Remains Made Available for Return to Tribe
Little River Band of Ottawa Indians, Michigan	90
Bay Mills Indian Community, Michigan	37
Keweenaw Bay Indian Community, Michigan	37
Lac Vieux Desert Band of Lake Superior Chippewa Indians of Michigan	37
Little Traverse Bay Bands of Odawa Indians, Michigan	37
Pokagon Band of Potawatomi Indians, Michigan and Indiana	37
Saginaw Chippewa Indian Tribe of Michigan	37
Sault Ste. Marie Tribe of Chippewa Indians, Michigan	37
Match-e-be-nash-she-wish Band of Pottawatomi Indians of Michigan	36
Sac and Fox Nation, Oklahoma	36
Grand Traverse Band of Ottawa and Chippewa Indians, Michigan	34
Hannahville Indian Community, Michigan	34
Nottawaseppi Huron Band of the Potawatomi, Michigan (formerly the Huron Potawatomi, Inc.)	34
Absentee-Shawnee Tribe of Indians of Oklahoma	33
Bad River Band of the Lake Superior Tribe of Chippewa Indians of the Bad River Reservation, Wisconsin	33
Bois Forte Band (Nett Lake) of the Minnesota Chippewa Tribe, Minnesota	33
Chippewa Cree Indians of the Rocky Boy's Reservation, Montana	33
Citizen Potawatomi Nation, Oklahoma	33
Delaware Nation, Oklahoma	33
Delaware Tribe of Indians	33
Eastern Shawnee Tribe of Oklahoma	33
Fond du Lac Band of the Minnesota Chippewa Tribe, Minnesota	33
Forest County Potawatomi Community, Wisconsin	33
Grand Portage Band of the Minnesota Chippewa Tribe, Minnesota	33
Kickapoo Traditional Tribe of Texas	33
Kickapoo Tribe of Indians of the Kickapoo Reservation in Kansas	33
Kickapoo Tribe of Oklahoma	33
Lac Courte Oreilles Band of Lake Superior Chippewa Indians of Wisconsin	33
Lac du Flambeau Band of Lake Superior Chippewa Indians of the Lac du Flambeau Reservation of Wisconsin	33
Leech Lake Band of the Minnesota Chippewa Tribe, Minnesota	33
Miami Tribe of Oklahoma	33
Mille Lacs Band of the Minnesota Chippewa Tribe, Minnesota	33
Ottawa Tribe of Oklahoma	33
Peoria Tribe of Indians of Oklahoma	33
Prairie Band of Potawatomi Nation	33
Quechan Tribe of the Fort Yuma Indian Reservation, California and Arizona	33
Red Cliff Band of Lake Superior Chippewa Indians of Wisconsin	33
Red Lake Band of Chippewa Indians, Minnesota	33
Sac and Fox Nation of Missouri in Kansas and Nebraska	33
Sac and Fox Tribe of the Mississippi in Iowa	33
Seneca Nation of Indians	33
Seneca-Cayuga Nation	33
Shawnee Tribe	33
Sokaogon Chippewa Community, Wisconsin	33
St. Croix Chippewa Indians of Wisconsin	33
Tonawanda Band of Seneca	33
Turtle Mountain Band of Chippewa Indians of North Dakota	33
White Earth Band of Minnesota Chippewa Tribe, Minnesota	33
Wyandotte Nation	33
Grand River Band of Ottawa Indians	3

Search for institutions holding Native American remains and tribes seeking to reclaim them

Try the University of California, Berkeley, the Chickasaw Nation or Arizona.

Institutions that have not submitted information to the federal government are not listed.

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Behind ProPublica’s Reporting on Repatriation

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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

by Ash Ngu and Andrea Suozzo Jan. 11, 2023 Data from Nov. 29, 2023 Additional reporting by Asia Fields, Mary Hudetz and Logan Jaffe for ProPublica and Graham Brewer for NBC News. Additional development by Alec Glassford.