Bernice P. Bishop Museum — NAGPRA Database

The Repatriation Database Data from Nov. 29, 2023

Where Native American remains reported by the Bernice P. Bishop Museum were taken from

Each county is a peak

Height is the minimum amount of remains taken from county, as reported by institution

Color is reported rate of remains made available for return to tribes

Institution reported no remains taken from these counties

Location of institution

Note: The Bernice P. Bishop Museum reported remains of at least two Native Americans with no location information. 100% of these remains were made available for return to tribes.

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.

Timeline of Native American remains made available for return to tribes by the Bernice P. Bishop Museum

Tribal and institutional capacity, funding, staffing, regulatory changes, audits, Review Committee decisions and litigation may influence timelines. Under NAGPRA, institutions determine whether Native American remains may be returned through cultural affiliation using evidence such as tribal traditional knowledge and biological and archaeological links, or through disposition based on geographic affiliation.

How the Bernice P. Bishop Museum compares to other institutions

The amount of Native American remains still held by institutions ranges widely.

The Bernice P. Bishop Museum made Native American remains available for return to 24 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
Hui Malama I Na Kupuna O Hawai'i Nei	1,418
Office of Hawaiian Affairs	1,396
Native Hawaiian Organizations	1,075
O'ahu Island Burial Council	1,052
Ka Lahui Hawaii	1,049
Nahoa 'Olelo O Kamehameha Society	957
Alu Like, Inc.	954
Daughters and Sons of Hawaiian Warriors	954
Hawaiian Civic Clubs of Honolulu	954
Kamehameha School	954
Royal Order of Kamehameha I	954
Hawaii Island Burial Council	246
Hui Malama Pono 'O Lanai	215
Kauai/Niihau Island Burial Council	192
Maui/Lanai Island Burial Council	164
Department of Hawaiian Homelands	148
Molokai Island Burial Council	101
Association of Hawaiian Civic Clubs	98
Hui Alanui O Makena	66
Nakupuna O Maui	66
Friends of Iolani Palace	35
Na Pali Coast 'Ohana	3
Santa Rosa Indian Community of the Santa Rosa Rancheria, California	3
Hui Kako'o	2

The Bernice P. Bishop Museum reported making 100% of more than 500 associated funerary objects available for return to tribes.

The funerary objects were taken along with Native American remains reported by the institution.

509 associated funerary objects made available for return to tribes

0 associated funerary objects not made available for return

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.

More from The Repatriation Project

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The Museum Built on Native American Burial Mounds

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.