Iowa
Institutions reported making 86% of the more than 1,400 Native American remains taken from Iowa available for return to tribes under NAGPRA.
There are 10 institutions located in Iowa 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 |
---|---|---|---|
University of Iowa, Office of the State Archaeologist | 111 | 1,095 | 91% |
Putnam Museum | 10 | 6 | 38% |
University of Northern Iowa | 7 | 0 | 0% |
Grout Museum of History and Science | 6 | 0 | 0% |
Palmer Foundation for Chiropractic History | 6 | 4 | 40% |
Salisbury House | 3 | 0 | 0% |
Coe College | 0 | 7 | 100% |
Sioux City Public Museum | 0 | 1 | 100% |
State Historical Society of Iowa | 0 | 221 | 100% |
U.S. Department of the Interior | 0 | 70 | 100% |
There are 20 institutions that reported Native American remains taken from Iowa.
Institution | Remains Not Made Available for Return | Remains Made Available for Return | % of Remains Made Available for Return |
---|---|---|---|
U.S. Department of Defense | 81 | 0 | 0% |
University of Iowa, Office of the State Archaeologist | 61 | 947 | 94% |
Harvard University | 16 | 2 | 11% |
University of Nebraska State Museum | 11 | 0 | 0% |
Wisconsin Historical Society | 8 | 0 | 0% |
Milwaukee Public Museum | 5 | 0 | 0% |
University of Tennessee, Knoxville | 5 | 44 | 90% |
Putnam Museum | 4 | 1 | 20% |
Field Museum | 3 | 0 | 0% |
Grout Museum of History and Science | 2 | 0 | 0% |
University of Missouri, Columbia, Museum of Anthropology | 2 | 0 | 0% |
Cleveland Museum of Natural History | 1 | 0 | 0% |
Hastings Museum | 1 | 0 | 0% |
Illinois State Museum | 1 | 0 | 0% |
University of Arizona, Arizona State Museum | 1 | 0 | 0% |
Bess Bower Dunn Museum | 0 | 1 | 100% |
South Dakota State Historical Society, State Archaeological Research Center | 0 | 1 | 100% |
Springfield Science Museum | 0 | 1 | 100% |
State Historical Society of Iowa | 0 | 213 | 100% |
U.S. Department of the Interior | 0 | 70 | 100% |
Institutions made Native American remains taken from Iowa available for return to 33 tribes.
Tribe | Remains Made Available for Return to Tribe |
---|---|
Iowa Tribe of Oklahoma | 638 |
Iowa Tribe of Kansas and Nebraska | 637 |
Otoe-Missouria Tribe of Indians, Oklahoma | 637 |
Omaha Tribe of Nebraska | 478 |
Ponca Tribe of Indians of Oklahoma | 478 |
Ponca Tribe of Nebraska | 478 |
Three Affiliated Tribes of the Fort Berthold Reservation, North Dakota | 469 |
Institution could not determine a culturally affiliated tribe and remains were transferred or reinterred according to state or other law | 462 |
Ho-Chunk Nation of Wisconsin | 403 |
Winnebago Tribe of Nebraska | 402 |
Lower Sioux Indian Community in the State of Minnesota | 394 |
Flandreau Santee Sioux Tribe of South Dakota | 383 |
Santee Sioux Nation, Nebraska | 383 |
Sisseton-Wahpeton Oyate of the Lake Traverse Reservation, South Dakota | 383 |
Yankton Sioux Tribe of South Dakota | 383 |
Sac and Fox Nation of Missouri in Kansas and Nebraska | 356 |
Sac and Fox Nation, Oklahoma | 356 |
Sac and Fox Tribe of the Mississippi in Iowa | 356 |
Pawnee Nation of Oklahoma | 329 |
Citizen Potawatomi Nation, Oklahoma | 328 |
Peoria Tribe of Indians of Oklahoma | 328 |
Prairie Band of Potawatomi Nation | 328 |
Upper Sioux Community, Minnesota | 66 |
Shakopee Mdewakanton Sioux Community of Minnesota | 65 |
Crow Creek Sioux Tribe of the Crow Creek Reservation, South Dakota | 55 |
Prairie Island Indian Community in the State of Minnesota | 53 |
Standing Rock Sioux Tribe of North and South Dakota | 43 |
Cheyenne River Sioux Tribe of the Cheyenne River Reservation, South Dakota | 13 |
Lower Brule Sioux Tribe of the Lower Brule Reservation, South Dakota | 13 |
Oglala Sioux Tribe | 13 |
Rosebud Sioux Tribe of the Rosebud Indian Reservation, South Dakota | 13 |
Spirit Lake Tribe, North Dakota | 13 |
Assiniboine and Sioux Tribes of the Fort Peck Indian Reservation, Montana | 1 |
Institutions reported Native American remains taken from 60 counties in Iowa.
County | Remains Taken From County Not Made Available for Return | Remains Made Available for Return | % of Remains Made Available for Return |
---|---|---|---|
Polk County | 47 | 35 | 43% |
Dubuque County | 28 | 7 | 20% |
Marion County | 17 | 1 | 6% |
Boone County | 11 | 13 | 54% |
Pottawattamie County | 11 | 17 | 61% |
Clinton County | 7 | 14 | 67% |
Floyd County | 6 | 13 | 68% |
Johnson County | 5 | 4 | 44% |
Louisa County | 5 | 63 | 93% |
Mills County | 4 | 42 | 91% |
Warren County | 4 | 0 | 0% |
Cherokee County | 3 | 33 | 92% |
Clayton County | 3 | 74 | 96% |
Jackson County | 3 | 41 | 93% |
Wapello County | 3 | 0 | 0% |
Allamakee County | 2 | 250 | 99% |
Monona County | 2 | 2 | 50% |
Cass County | 1 | 1 | 50% |
Chickasaw County | 1 | 3 | 75% |
Dickinson County | 1 | 29 | 97% |
Hamilton County | 1 | 46 | 98% |
Lyon County | 1 | 41 | 98% |
Marshall County | 1 | 0 | 0% |
Muscatine County | 1 | 28 | 97% |
Page County | 1 | 3 | 75% |
Plymouth County | 1 | 166 | 99% |
Sac County | 1 | 0 | 0% |
Story County | 1 | 4 | 80% |
Washington County | 1 | 0 | 0% |
Woodbury County | 1 | 100 | 99% |
Black Hawk County | 0 | 1 | 100% |
Buchanan County | 0 | 1 | 100% |
Buena Vista County | 0 | 8 | 100% |
Calhoun County | 0 | 1 | 100% |
Cedar County | 0 | 1 | 100% |
Cerro Gordo County | 0 | 1 | 100% |
Clay County | 0 | 7 | 100% |
Crawford County | 0 | 1 | 100% |
Dallas County | 0 | 5 | 100% |
Des Moines County | 0 | 15 | 100% |
Fayette County | 0 | 9 | 100% |
Fremont County | 0 | 5 | 100% |
Hardin County | 0 | 1 | 100% |
Harrison County | 0 | 4 | 100% |
Humboldt County | 0 | 7 | 100% |
Ida County | 0 | 2 | 100% |
Jasper County | 0 | 4 | 100% |
Jefferson County | 0 | 12 | 100% |
Jones County | 0 | 30 | 100% |
Lee County | 0 | 2 | 100% |
O'Brien County | 0 | 2 | 100% |
Palo Alto County | 0 | 1 | 100% |
Scott County | 0 | 33 | 100% |
Shelby County | 0 | 2 | 100% |
Sioux County | 0 | 2 | 100% |
Union County | 0 | 3 | 100% |
Webster County | 0 | 10 | 100% |
Winnebago County | 0 | 8 | 100% |
Winneshiek County | 0 | 10 | 100% |
Worth County | 0 | 2 | 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