Tennessee
Institutions reported making 63% of the more than 11,900 Native American remains taken from Tennessee available for return to tribes under NAGPRA.
There are 12 institutions located in Tennessee 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 Tennessee, Knoxville | 3,929 | 2,329 | 37% |
Tennessee Department of Environment and Conservation, Division of Archaeology | 374 | 478 | 56% |
U.S. Department of Defense | 150 | 192 | 56% |
Vanderbilt University | 86 | 208 | 71% |
University of Memphis | 85 | 553 | 87% |
U.S. Department of the Interior | 38 | 1 | 3% |
Memphis Pink Palace Museum | 35 | 18 | 34% |
University of Tennessee at Chattanooga | 10 | 0 | 0% |
Children's Museum of Oak Ridge | 0 | 2 | 100% |
Tennessee Valley Authority | 0 | 14,134 | 100% |
U.S. Department of Agriculture | 0 | 46 | 100% |
U.S. Department of Energy | 0 | 1 | 100% |
There are 39 institutions that reported Native American remains taken from Tennessee.
Institution | Remains Not Made Available for Return | Remains Made Available for Return | % of Remains Made Available for Return |
---|---|---|---|
University of Tennessee, Knoxville | 3,657 | 171 | 4% |
Tennessee Department of Environment and Conservation, Division of Archaeology | 369 | 478 | 56% |
Harvard University | 140 | 626 | 82% |
U.S. Department of Defense | 122 | 48 | 28% |
Vanderbilt University | 86 | 208 | 71% |
U.S. Department of the Interior | 35 | 153 | 81% |
University of Tennessee at Chattanooga | 10 | 0 | 0% |
University of Memphis | 6 | 548 | 99% |
State Museum of Pennsylvania | 4 | 0 | 0% |
University of Kentucky, William S. Webb Museum of Anthropology | 4 | 0 | 0% |
Beloit College, Logan Museum of Anthropology | 3 | 0 | 0% |
Bridgewater College | 3 | 0 | 0% |
Robert S. Peabody Institute of Archaeology, Phillips Academy | 2 | 0 | 0% |
Illinois State Museum | 1 | 1 | 50% |
University of California, Berkeley | 1 | 0 | 0% |
Wisconsin Historical Society | 1 | 0 | 0% |
American Museum of Natural History | 0 | 15 | 100% |
Amherst College, Beneski Museum of Natural History | 0 | 1 | 100% |
Charleston Museum | 0 | 1 | 100% |
Children's Museum of Oak Ridge | 0 | 2 | 100% |
Dartmouth College, Hood Museum of Art | 0 | 1 | 100% |
Georgia State University | 0 | 8 | 100% |
Grand Rapids Public Museum | 0 | 1 | 100% |
Indiana University | 0 | 2 | 100% |
Memphis Pink Palace Museum | 0 | 4 | 100% |
Murray State University, Archaeology Laboratory | 0 | 3 | 100% |
New York University, College of Dentistry | 0 | 18 | 100% |
Tennessee Valley Authority | 0 | 5,098 | 100% |
U.S. Department of Agriculture | 0 | 46 | 100% |
U.S. Department of Energy | 0 | 1 | 100% |
University of Arizona, Arizona State Museum | 0 | 1 | 100% |
University of Arkansas | 0 | 2 | 100% |
University of Denver, Museum of Anthropology | 0 | 2 | 100% |
University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign | 0 | 1 | 100% |
University of Iowa, Office of the State Archaeologist | 0 | 2 | 100% |
University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill | 0 | 10 | 100% |
University of Pennsylvania Museum of Archaeology and Anthropology | 0 | 3 | 100% |
University of Southern Mississippi, Department of Anthropology and Sociology | 0 | 1 | 100% |
Wesleyan University, Archaeology Laboratory | 0 | 10 | 100% |
Institutions made Native American remains taken from Tennessee available for return to 19 tribes.
Tribe | Remains Made Available for Return to Tribe |
---|---|
Eastern Band of Cherokee Indians | 5,997 |
Chickasaw Nation | 5,957 |
United Keetoowah Band of Cherokee Indians in Oklahoma | 5,916 |
Cherokee Nation | 5,535 |
Muscogee (Creek) Nation | 4,448 |
Shawnee Tribe | 4,149 |
Eastern Shawnee Tribe of Oklahoma | 4,147 |
Absentee-Shawnee Tribe of Indians of Oklahoma | 4,146 |
Choctaw Nation of Oklahoma | 4,140 |
Thlopthlocco Tribal Town | 4,140 |
Kialegee Tribal Town | 4,139 |
Poarch Band of Creek Indians | 4,139 |
Alabama-Coushatta Tribe of Texas | 4,138 |
Coushatta Tribe of Louisiana | 4,138 |
Jena Band of Choctaw Indians | 4,138 |
The Seminole Nation of Oklahoma | 4,138 |
Quapaw Nation | 386 |
Institution could not determine a culturally affiliated tribe and remains were transferred or reinterred according to state or other law | 21 |
Alabama-Quassarte Tribal Town, Oklahoma | 1 |
Institutions reported Native American remains taken from 69 counties in Tennessee.
County | Remains Taken From County Not Made Available for Return | Remains Made Available for Return | % of Remains Made Available for Return |
---|---|---|---|
Davidson County | 1,102 | 203 | 16% |
Monroe County | 949 | 498 | 34% |
Stewart County | 436 | 164 | 27% |
Henry County | 228 | 419 | 65% |
Bradley County | 180 | 575 | 76% |
Sumner County | 146 | 24 | 14% |
Roane County | 113 | 335 | 75% |
Greene County | 98 | 8 | 8% |
Shelby County | 98 | 385 | 80% |
Cocke County | 85 | 0 | 0% |
Humphreys County | 83 | 146 | 64% |
Montgomery County | 80 | 0 | 0% |
Smith County | 69 | 1 | 1% |
Blount County | 66 | 0 | 0% |
Hamilton County | 64 | 657 | 91% |
Knox County | 62 | 2 | 3% |
Jackson County | 41 | 1 | 2% |
Cheatham County | 40 | 0 | 0% |
Jefferson County | 40 | 439 | 92% |
Loudon County | 37 | 161 | 81% |
Claiborne County | 34 | 7 | 17% |
Wilson County | 34 | 0 | 0% |
Polk County | 30 | 16 | 35% |
Anderson County | 29 | 361 | 93% |
Sullivan County | 26 | 0 | 0% |
Scott County | 20 | 0 | 0% |
White County | 20 | 0 | 0% |
Sevier County | 18 | 0 | 0% |
Robertson County | 14 | 0 | 0% |
Grainger County | 9 | 0 | 0% |
Rhea County | 7 | 101 | 94% |
Marion County | 6 | 31 | 84% |
Marshall County | 6 | 0 | 0% |
Perry County | 5 | 67 | 93% |
Hamblen County | 4 | 0 | 0% |
Hawkins County | 3 | 18 | 86% |
Union County | 3 | 0 | 0% |
Campbell County | 2 | 17 | 89% |
Fentress County | 2 | 0 | 0% |
McMinn County | 2 | 212 | 99% |
Trousdale County | 2 | 99 | 98% |
Benton County | 1 | 473 | 100% |
Macon County | 1 | 0 | 0% |
Morgan County | 1 | 0 | 0% |
Washington County | 1 | 46 | 98% |
Williamson County | 1 | 610 | 100% |
Bedford County | 0 | 10 | 100% |
Carter County | 0 | 2 | 100% |
Coffee County | 0 | 117 | 100% |
Decatur County | 0 | 121 | 100% |
Dickson County | 0 | 4 | 100% |
Franklin County | 0 | 4 | 100% |
Gibson County | 0 | 15 | 100% |
Hancock County | 0 | 36 | 100% |
Hardeman County | 0 | 1 | 100% |
Hardin County | 0 | 39 | 100% |
Haywood County | 0 | 37 | 100% |
Hickman County | 0 | 118 | 100% |
Lake County | 0 | 2 | 100% |
Lauderdale County | 0 | 18 | 100% |
Lincoln County | 0 | 27 | 100% |
McNairy County | 0 | 1 | 100% |
Madison County | 0 | 24 | 100% |
Maury County | 0 | 84 | 100% |
Meigs County | 0 | 425 | 100% |
Obion County | 0 | 97 | 100% |
Rutherford County | 0 | 21 | 100% |
Tipton County | 0 | 15 | 100% |
Wayne County | 0 | 1 | 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