Skip to content
ProPublica
Donate
ProPublica
Donate
The Repatriation Database Data from Nov. 29, 2023

Stanford University Heritage Services

Located in California · Read the institution’s response

Stanford Univ. Heritage Services reported still having the remains of at least 36 Native Americans.

The institution has made available for return 25% of the 48 Native American remains that it reported to the federal government.

remains of 12 Native Americans made available for return to tribes
remains of at least 36 Native Americans not made available for return

Where Native American remains reported by Stanford Univ. Heritage Services 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
Swipe interaction icon
Note: Stanford Univ. Heritage Services reported remains of at least 11 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 Stanford Univ. Heritage Services

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 Stanford Univ. Heritage Services compares to other institutions

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

Stanford Univ. Heritage Services made Native American remains available for return to six 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
Federated Indians of Graton Rancheria, California8
Picayune Rancheria of Chukchansi Indians of California3
Santa Rosa Indian Community of the Santa Rosa Rancheria, California3
Table Mountain Rancheria3
Tule River Indian Tribe of the Tule River Reservation, California3
Lineal Descendant1

Stanford Univ. Heritage Services reported making 100% of more than 300 associated funerary objects available for return to tribes.

The funerary objects were taken along with Native American remains reported by the institution.
305 associated funerary objects made available for return to tribes
0 associated funerary objects not made available for return

Stanford Univ. Heritage Services’s response:

Stanford is committed to respectful outreach and collaboration with tribal partners on repatriation. The largest group of Native American individuals held at the university was repatriated prior to the adoption of the NAGPRA in 1990.

Stanford voluntarily repatriated over 1,000 people and their belongings in 1988 and 1989 to the Muwekma Ohlone Tribe of the San Francisco Bay Area, and has also repatriated people to communities in Australia and Aotearoa/New Zealand. All of the remaining indigenous people, and their belongings, within Stanford’s care are “available for repatriation.”

— University spokesperson
Get in touch

Know how an institution is handling repatriation? Have a personal story to share? We'd like to hear from you.

Learn how to report on repatriation

Watch an informational webinar with our reporters.

Sign up for the newsletter
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