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The Repatriation Database Data from Nov. 29, 2023

Milwaukee Public Museum

Located in Wisconsin

The Milwaukee Public Museum has the 18th largest collection of unrepatriated Native American remains in the U.S. The institution reported still having the remains of at least 1,600 Native Americans that it has not made available for return to tribes.

The institution has made available for return 3% of the more than 1,600 Native American remains that it reported to the federal government.

remains of 48 Native Americans made available for return to tribes
remains of at least 1,600 Native Americans not made available for return

Where Native American remains reported by the Milwaukee Public 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
0%100%
Institution reported no remains taken from these counties
Location of institution
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Note: The Milwaukee Public Museum reported remains of at least 35 Native Americans with no location information. 0% 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 Milwaukee Public 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 Milwaukee Public Museum compares to other institutions

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

The Milwaukee Public Museum made Native American remains available for return to 40 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.
TribeRemains Made Available for Return To
Lac du Flambeau Band of Lake Superior Chippewa Indians of the Lac du Flambeau Reservation of Wisconsin17
Bad River Band of the Lake Superior Tribe of Chippewa Indians of the Bad River Reservation, Wisconsin15
Lac Courte Oreilles Band of Lake Superior Chippewa Indians of Wisconsin15
Lac Vieux Desert Band of Lake Superior Chippewa Indians of Michigan15
Leech Lake Band of the Minnesota Chippewa Tribe, Minnesota15
Mille Lacs Band of the Minnesota Chippewa Tribe, Minnesota15
Red Cliff Band of Lake Superior Chippewa Indians of Wisconsin15
White Earth Band of Minnesota Chippewa Tribe, Minnesota15
Three Affiliated Tribes of the Fort Berthold Reservation, North Dakota7
Chickasaw Nation4
Choctaw Nation of Oklahoma4
Quapaw Nation4
Citizen Potawatomi Nation, Oklahoma3
Forest County Potawatomi Community, Wisconsin3
Hannahville Indian Community, Michigan3
Ho-Chunk Nation of Wisconsin3
Hopi Tribe of Arizona3
Nottawaseppi Huron Band of the Potawatomi, Michigan (formerly the Huron Potawatomi, Inc.)3
Pokagon Band of Potawatomi Indians, Michigan and Indiana3
Prairie Band of Potawatomi Nation3
Winnebago Tribe of Nebraska3
Zuni Tribe of the Zuni Reservation, New Mexico3
Ak-Chin Indian Community2
Confederated Tribes of the Colville Reservation2
Gila River Indian Community of the Gila River Indian Reservation, Arizona2
Omaha Tribe of Nebraska2
Salt River Pima-Maricopa Indian Community of the Salt River Reservation, Arizona2
Tohono O'odham Nation of Arizona2
Aleut Corporation1
Burns Paiute Tribe1
Central Council of the Tlingit and Haida Indian Tribes1
Confederated Tribes of the Warm Springs Reservation of Oregon1
Fort Bidwell Indian Community of the Fort Bidwell Reservation of California1
Fort McDermitt Paiute and Shoshone Tribes of the Fort McDermitt Indian Reservation, Nevada and Oregon1
Koniag, Inc.1
Pawnee Nation of Oklahoma1
Santa Ynez Band of Chumash Mission Indians of the Santa Ynez Reservation, California1
Seneca Nation of Indians1
Seneca-Cayuga Nation1
Shoshone-Paiute Tribes of the Duck Valley Reservation, Nevada1

The Milwaukee Public Museum reported making 33% of more than 1,000 associated funerary objects available for return to tribes.

The funerary objects were taken along with Native American remains reported by the institution.
339 associated funerary objects made available for return to tribes
at least 681 associated funerary objects not made available for return
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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