Fort Lewis College — NAGPRA Database

The Repatriation Database Data from Nov. 29, 2023

Where Native American remains reported by Fort Lewis College 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: Fort Lewis College reported remains of at least 40 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 Fort Lewis College

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 Fort Lewis College compares to other institutions

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

Fort Lewis College made Native American remains available for return to 23 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
Hopi Tribe of Arizona	91
Ohkay Owingeh, New Mexico (formerly the Pueblo of San Juan)	91
Pueblo of Acoma, New Mexico	91
Pueblo of Cochiti, New Mexico	91
Pueblo of Isleta, New Mexico	91
Pueblo of Jemez, New Mexico	91
Pueblo of Laguna, New Mexico	91
Pueblo of Nambe, New Mexico	91
Pueblo of Picuris, New Mexico	91
Pueblo of Pojoaque, New Mexico	91
Pueblo of San Felipe, New Mexico	91
Pueblo of San Ildefonso, New Mexico	91
Pueblo of Sandia, New Mexico	91
Pueblo of Santa Ana, New Mexico	91
Pueblo of Santa Clara, New Mexico	91
Pueblo of Taos, New Mexico	91
Pueblo of Tesuque, New Mexico	91
Pueblo of Zia, New Mexico	91
Santo Domingo Pueblo	91
Ysleta del Sur Pueblo	91
Zuni Tribe of the Zuni Reservation, New Mexico	91
Southern Ute Indian Tribe of the Southern Ute Reservation, Colorado	43
Ute Mountain Ute Tribe	43

Fort Lewis College reported making 100% of more than 200 associated funerary objects available for return to tribes.

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

209 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.

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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.