Brigham Young University, Museum of Peoples and Cultures
Brigham Young Univ. reported still having the remains of at least 81 Native Americans.
The institution has made available for return 37% of the more than 100 Native American remains that it reported to the federal government.
Where Native American remains reported by Brigham Young Univ. were taken from
Timeline of Native American remains made available for return to tribes by Brigham Young Univ.
How Brigham Young Univ. compares to other institutions
Brigham Young Univ. made Native American remains available for return to 29 tribes.
| Tribe | Remains Made Available for Return To |
|---|---|
| Hopi Tribe of Arizona | 39 |
| Kaibab Band of Paiute Indians of the Kaibab Indian Reservation, Arizona | 39 |
| Pueblo of Acoma, New Mexico | 39 |
| Pueblo of Laguna, New Mexico | 39 |
| Pueblo of Pojoaque, New Mexico | 39 |
| Pueblo of San Felipe, New Mexico | 39 |
| Pueblo of San Ildefonso, New Mexico | 39 |
| Pueblo of Sandia, New Mexico | 39 |
| Pueblo of Santa Clara, New Mexico | 39 |
| Santo Domingo Pueblo | 39 |
| Zuni Tribe of the Zuni Reservation, New Mexico | 39 |
| Ohkay Owingeh, New Mexico (formerly the Pueblo of San Juan) | 6 |
| Pueblo of Cochiti, New Mexico | 6 |
| Pueblo of Isleta, New Mexico | 6 |
| Pueblo of Jemez, New Mexico | 6 |
| Pueblo of Nambe, New Mexico | 6 |
| Pueblo of Picuris, New Mexico | 6 |
| Pueblo of Santa Ana, New Mexico | 6 |
| Pueblo of Taos, New Mexico | 6 |
| Pueblo of Tesuque, New Mexico | 6 |
| Pueblo of Zia, New Mexico | 6 |
| Ute Indian Tribe of the Uintah and Ouray Reservation, Utah | 5 |
| Ute Mountain Ute Tribe | 5 |
| Paiute-Shoshone Tribe of the Fallon Reservation and Colony, Nevada | 2 |
| San Juan Southern Paiute Tribe of Arizona | 2 |
| Summit Lake Paiute Tribe of Nevada | 2 |
| Walker River Paiute Tribe of the Walker River Reservation, Nevada | 2 |
| Yerington Paiute Tribe of the Yerington Colony and Campbell Ranch, Nevada | 2 |
| Havasupai Tribe of the Havasupai Reservation, Arizona | 1 |
Brigham Young Univ. reported making 90% of more than 600 associated funerary objects available for return to tribes.
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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