Idaho
Institutions reported making 18% of the more than 100 Native American remains taken from Idaho available for return to tribes under NAGPRA.
There are seven institutions located in Idaho that reported Native American remains taken from across the country.
Institution | Remains Not Made Available for Return | Remains Made Available for Return | % of Remains Made Available for Return |
---|---|---|---|
Idaho State Historical Society | 136 | 1 | 1% |
Idaho State University, Idaho Museum of Natural History | 22 | 0 | 0% |
University of Idaho, Alfred W. Bowers Laboratory of Anthropology | 8 | 36 | 82% |
College of Southern Idaho | 5 | 1 | 17% |
Idaho Department of Transportation | 0 | 4 | 100% |
U.S. Department of Agriculture | 0 | 1 | 100% |
U.S. Department of the Interior | 0 | 21 | 100% |
There are 15 institutions that reported Native American remains taken from Idaho.
Institution | Remains Not Made Available for Return | Remains Made Available for Return | % of Remains Made Available for Return |
---|---|---|---|
Idaho State Historical Society | 127 | 1 | 1% |
Idaho State University, Idaho Museum of Natural History | 13 | 0 | 0% |
University of California, Berkeley | 2 | 0 | 0% |
Indiana University | 1 | 0 | 0% |
Natural History Museum of Utah | 1 | 0 | 0% |
St. Joseph Museums, Inc. | 1 | 0 | 0% |
University of Idaho, Alfred W. Bowers Laboratory of Anthropology | 1 | 0 | 0% |
Field Museum | 0 | 2 | 100% |
Idaho Department of Transportation | 0 | 4 | 100% |
Karshner Museum | 0 | 1 | 100% |
U.S. Department of Agriculture | 0 | 7 | 100% |
U.S. Department of Defense | 0 | 7 | 100% |
U.S. Department of the Interior | 0 | 8 | 100% |
University of Connecticut, Connecticut State Museum of Natural History | 0 | 1 | 100% |
University of Washington | 0 | 1 | 100% |
Institutions made Native American remains taken from Idaho available for return to nine tribes.
Tribe | Remains Made Available for Return to Tribe |
---|---|
Nez Perce Tribe | 21 |
Shoshone-Bannock Tribes of the Fort Hall Reservation | 7 |
Shoshone-Paiute Tribes of the Duck Valley Reservation, Nevada | 7 |
Northwestern Band of Shoshoni Nation | 6 |
Confederated Tribes of the Colville Reservation | 4 |
Confederated Tribes of the Umatilla Indian Reservation | 4 |
Kootenai Tribe of Idaho | 2 |
Kalispel Indian Community of the Kalispel Reservation | 1 |
Lineal Descendant | 1 |
Institutions reported Native American remains taken from 19 counties in Idaho.
County | Remains Taken From County Not Made Available for Return | Remains Made Available for Return | % of Remains Made Available for Return |
---|---|---|---|
Adams County | 60 | 0 | 0% |
Washington County | 19 | 0 | 0% |
Idaho County | 5 | 6 | 55% |
Owyhee County | 4 | 1 | 20% |
Payette County | 3 | 0 | 0% |
Twin Falls County | 3 | 0 | 0% |
Elmore County | 2 | 3 | 60% |
Jerome County | 2 | 1 | 33% |
Lemhi County | 2 | 2 | 50% |
Bannock County | 1 | 0 | 0% |
Bear Lake County | 1 | 0 | 0% |
Bingham County | 1 | 0 | 0% |
Bonner County | 1 | 1 | 50% |
Butte County | 1 | 1 | 50% |
Canyon County | 1 | 0 | 0% |
Madison County | 1 | 0 | 0% |
Boundary County | 0 | 2 | 100% |
Clearwater County | 0 | 3 | 100% |
Nez Perce County | 0 | 10 | 100% |
Know how an institution is handling repatriation? Have a personal story to share? We'd like to hear from you.
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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