Illinois State Museum
Located in Illinois · Read the institution’s response
The Illinois State Museum has the 2nd largest collection of unrepatriated Native American remains in the U.S. The institution reported still having the remains of at least 7,100 Native Americans that it has not made available for return to tribes.
The institution has made available for return 3% of the more than 7,300 Native American remains that it reported to the federal government.
Where Native American remains reported by the Illinois State Museum were taken from
Timeline of Native American remains made available for return to tribes by the Illinois State Museum
How the Illinois State Museum compares to other institutions
The Illinois State Museum made Native American remains available for return to 61 tribes.
| Tribe | Remains Made Available for Return To |
|---|---|
| Peoria Tribe of Indians of Oklahoma | 132 |
| Osage Nation | 21 |
| Quapaw Nation | 19 |
| Citizen Potawatomi Nation, Oklahoma | 13 |
| Forest County Potawatomi Community, Wisconsin | 13 |
| Hannahville Indian Community, Michigan | 13 |
| Match-e-be-nash-she-wish Band of Pottawatomi Indians of Michigan | 13 |
| Nottawaseppi Huron Band of the Potawatomi, Michigan (formerly the Huron Potawatomi, Inc.) | 13 |
| Pokagon Band of Potawatomi Indians, Michigan and Indiana | 13 |
| Prairie Band of Potawatomi Nation | 13 |
| Ho-Chunk Nation of Wisconsin | 3 |
| Winnebago Tribe of Nebraska | 3 |
| Barrow Inupiat Traditional Government, Native Village of | 2 |
| Cherokee Nation | 2 |
| Chickasaw Nation | 2 |
| Eastern Band of Cherokee Indians | 2 |
| Inupiat Community of the Arctic Slope | 2 |
| Sac and Fox Nation of Missouri in Kansas and Nebraska | 2 |
| Sac and Fox Nation, Oklahoma | 2 |
| Sac and Fox Tribe of the Mississippi in Iowa | 2 |
| Santa Ynez Band of Chumash Mission Indians of the Santa Ynez Reservation, California | 2 |
| United Keetoowah Band of Cherokee Indians in Oklahoma | 2 |
| Assiniboine and Sioux Tribes of the Fort Peck Indian Reservation, Montana | 1 |
| Bad River Band of the Lake Superior Tribe of Chippewa Indians of the Bad River Reservation, Wisconsin | 1 |
| Bay Mills Indian Community, Michigan | 1 |
| Bois Forte Band (Nett Lake) of the Minnesota Chippewa Tribe, Minnesota | 1 |
| Cheyenne River Sioux Tribe of the Cheyenne River Reservation, South Dakota | 1 |
| Cheyenne and Arapaho Tribes, Oklahoma | 1 |
| Chippewa Cree Indians of the Rocky Boy's Reservation, Montana | 1 |
| Fond du Lac Band of the Minnesota Chippewa Tribe, Minnesota | 1 |
| Grand Portage Band of the Minnesota Chippewa Tribe, Minnesota | 1 |
| Grand Traverse Band of Ottawa and Chippewa Indians, Michigan | 1 |
| Iowa Tribe of Kansas and Nebraska | 1 |
| Iowa Tribe of Oklahoma | 1 |
| Keweenaw Bay Indian Community, Michigan | 1 |
| Kickapoo Traditional Tribe of Texas | 1 |
| Kickapoo Tribe of Indians of the Kickapoo Reservation in Kansas | 1 |
| Kickapoo Tribe of Oklahoma | 1 |
| Lac Courte Oreilles Band of Lake Superior Chippewa Indians of Wisconsin | 1 |
| Lac Vieux Desert Band of Lake Superior Chippewa Indians of Michigan | 1 |
| Lac du Flambeau Band of Lake Superior Chippewa Indians of the Lac du Flambeau Reservation of Wisconsin | 1 |
| Leech Lake Band of the Minnesota Chippewa Tribe, Minnesota | 1 |
| Little River Band of Ottawa Indians, Michigan | 1 |
| Little Traverse Bay Bands of Odawa Indians, Michigan | 1 |
| Lower Brule Sioux Tribe of the Lower Brule Reservation, South Dakota | 1 |
| Mille Lacs Band of the Minnesota Chippewa Tribe, Minnesota | 1 |
| Minnesota Chippewa Tribe, Minnesota | 1 |
| Northern Cheyenne Tribe of the Northern Cheyenne Indian Reservation, Montana | 1 |
| Oglala Sioux Tribe | 1 |
| Otoe-Missouria Tribe of Indians, Oklahoma | 1 |
| Ottawa Tribe of Oklahoma | 1 |
| Red Cliff Band of Lake Superior Chippewa Indians of Wisconsin | 1 |
| Red Lake Band of Chippewa Indians, Minnesota | 1 |
| Rosebud Sioux Tribe of the Rosebud Indian Reservation, South Dakota | 1 |
| Saginaw Chippewa Indian Tribe of Michigan | 1 |
| Sault Ste. Marie Tribe of Chippewa Indians, Michigan | 1 |
| Sokaogon Chippewa Community, Wisconsin | 1 |
| St. Croix Chippewa Indians of Wisconsin | 1 |
| Standing Rock Sioux Tribe of North and South Dakota | 1 |
| Turtle Mountain Band of Chippewa Indians of North Dakota | 1 |
| White Earth Band of Minnesota Chippewa Tribe, Minnesota | 1 |
The Illinois State Museum reported making 48% of more than 69,600 associated funerary objects available for return to tribes.
The Illinois State Museum’s response:
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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
The Illinois State Museum said that current data kept by the National Park Service is outdated and that it is working with NPS to revise the numbers. The museum estimates it has the remains of approximately 7,000 Native Americans that are subject to the law.
“Archaeological and historical lines of evidence were privileged in determining cultural affiliation during early consultations and the creation of the Illinois State Museum’s NAGPRA inventories,” said Brooke M. Morgan, the museum's curator of anthropology. “A theoretical line was drawn in 1673, but this was based on the perceived inability to project contemporary Tribal identity to the ‘pre-contact’ period based on archaeological knowledge. At the time, culturally affiliating Native American human remains with more than one Tribe was unprecedented. The updated NAGPRA regulations of 2010 (43 CFR 10.11) created a path for the repatriation of ‘Culturally Unidentifiable’ individuals, but the Illinois State Museum did not take a proactive approach to repatriation. In the past thirty years, archaeological practice and NAGPRA implementation have changed significantly: scientific and historical lines of evidence are not necessarily privileged, and cultural affiliation to multiple Tribes is routine.”