Apache Tribe of Oklahoma
A federally recognized Indian tribe with headquarters in Oklahoma
Institutions reported making the remains of more than 1,000 Native Americans available for return to the Apache Tribe of Oklahoma.
The tribe was also eligible to claim more than 12,600 associated funerary objects.
Institutions continue to hold the remains of at least 16,100 Native Americans taken from counties known to be of interest to the tribe.*
Where Native American remains made available for return to the Apache Tribe of Oklahoma were taken from
These 24 institutions made Native American remains available for return to the Apache Tribe of Oklahoma.
Timeline of Native American remains made available for return to the Apache Tribe of Oklahoma
These institutions have not made available for return the remains of at least 16,100 Native Americans that were taken from counties known to be of interest to the Apache Tribe of Oklahoma.
Institution | Remains Not Made Available for Return That Were Taken From Counties of Interest to the Tribe |
---|---|
Univ. of Oklahoma | 2,211 Sam Noble Oklahoma Museum of Natural History (2,192) Oklahoma Archeological Survey (19) |
Univ. of Missouri, Columbia | 2,204 |
Univ. of Texas at Austin | 1,874 |
Dept. of the Interior | 1,446 BIA (906) New Mexico State Office (105) Natchitoches National Fish Hatchery (100) Buffalo National River (82) Tensas River National Wildlife Refuge (66) Amistad NRA (60) Navajo NM (46) Wyoming State Office (17) Jean Lafitte NHP and PRES (16) Mingo National Wildlife Refuge (16) Sherburne National Wildlife Refuge (15) Ozark National Scenic Riverways (4) Reclamation, Great Plains Region, Wyoming Area Office (3) Voyageurs NP (3) White River National Wildlife Refuge (2) Anasazi Heritage Center (1) Bayou Sauvage National Wildlife Refuge (1) D'Arbonne National Wildlife Refuge (1) Reclamation, Great Plains Region, Montana Area Office (1) Reclamation, Great Plains Region, Nebraska-Kansas Area Office (1) |
Univ. of Arizona | 1,356 |
Harvard Univ. | 974 |
Museum of New Mexico, Museum of Indian Arts and Culture | 737 |
Dept. of Defense | 644 Tulsa District (207) Fort Worth District (106) Rock Island District (81) Little Rock District (74) Fort Bliss (52) Vicksburg District (51) Omaha District (31) National Museum of Health and Medicine (16) Galveston District (13) Fort Leonard Wood (6) Kansas City District (4) White Sands Missile Range (2) St. Louis District (1) |
American Museum of Natural History | 619 |
Dept. of Agriculture | 549 Santa Fe NF (258) Tonto NF (85) Gila NF (80) Lincoln NF (45) Prescott NF (34) Carson NF (15) Mark Twain NF (14) Cibola NF (8) Coconino NF (6) Rio Grande NF (2) Coronado NF (1) Dakota Prairie Grasslands (1) |
Museum of Texas Tech Univ. | 335 |
Univ. of Texas at San Antonio | 289 |
West Texas A and M Univ. | 277 |
Missouri Dept. of Natural Resources | 201 |
Missouri Dept. of Transportation | 194 |
Field Museum | 157 |
Yale Univ. | 112 |
Univ. of Louisiana at Monroe | 106 |
Univ. of Alabama | 98 |
Univ. of Tennessee, Knoxville | 86 |
Minnesota Indian Affairs Council | 79 |
Univ. of Michigan | 75 |
Texas State Univ. | 66 |
Southeast Missouri State Univ. | 59 |
Univ. of New Mexico | 59 |
Louisiana State Univ. | 58 Museum of Natural Science (53) Dept. of Anthropology (5) |
Trinidad State Junior College | 48 |
Univ. of Iowa | 46 |
Beloit College | 45 |
South Dakota State Historical Society, State Archaeological Research Center | 44 |
Univ. of Arkansas | 41 |
Brazos Valley Museum of Natural History | 39 |
Univ. of Minnesota, Duluth | 39 |
Robert S. Peabody Institute of Archaeology | 36 |
Univ. of Nebraska State Museum | 36 |
Carlsbad Museum | 35 |
New Mexico Highlands Univ. | 35 |
Univ. of Wyoming | 35 |
Univ. of the Incarnate Word | 32 |
Fort Lewis College | 30 |
Sul Ross State Univ. | 30 |
Western Colorado Univ. | 29 |
Witte Museum | 29 |
Univ. of Kansas | 28 |
Houston Museum of Natural Science | 23 |
New York State Museum | 23 |
Louisiana Dept. of Culture, Recreation, and Tourism | 21 |
Gilcrease Museum | 20 |
Missouri State Univ. | 20 |
Poverty Point World Heritage Site | 17 |
Texas Parks and Wildlife | 17 |
Texas A and M Univ. | 16 Dept. of Anthropology (11) Commerce (5) |
Univ. of Central Missouri | 16 |
Univ. of Missouri, St. Louis | 16 |
Eastern Arizona College Foundation | 15 |
Hastings Museum | 15 |
Southern Illinois Univ., Carbondale | 15 |
Univ. of Texas, El Paso | 15 |
History Nebraska | 13 |
Univ. of Pennsylvania | 13 |
Kansas State Historical Society | 12 |
No Man's Land Historical Society | 12 |
Ohio History Connection | 12 |
Wisconsin Historical Society | 12 |
Illinois State Museum | 10 |
Los Angeles County Natural History Museum | 10 |
Montana State Univ., Museum of the Rockies | 10 |
Texas Historical Commission | 10 |
Milwaukee Public Museum | 9 |
Museum of Northern Arizona | 9 |
U.S. Environmental Protection Agency | 9 |
Univ. of California, Berkeley | 9 |
Brigham Young Univ. | 8 |
Coryell County Sheriff's Dept. | 8 |
Missouri Historical Society | 8 |
New Mexico State Univ. Museum | 8 |
Texas Dept. of Transportation | 8 |
Tioga Point Museum | 8 |
Dartmouth College | 7 |
Nassau County Dept. of Parks and Recreation | 7 |
Montana State Univ., Bozeman | 6 |
Natural History Museum of Utah | 6 |
Univ. of North Texas | 6 |
Univ. of Texas Permian Basin | 6 |
Washington Univ. | 6 |
Wichita State Univ. | 6 |
Goodhue County Historical Society | 5 |
San Bernardino County Museum | 5 |
Sul Ross State Univ. | 5 |
Carnegie Museum of Natural History | 4 |
Fort Concho NHL | 4 |
Montana Historical Society | 4 |
Buffalo Bill Center of the West | 3 |
Cleveland Museum of Natural History | 3 |
Kansas City Museum | 3 |
Kansas State Univ. | 3 |
Rochester Museum and Science Center | 3 |
St. Joseph Museums, Inc. | 3 |
Univ. of Memphis | 3 |
Univ. of Montana | 3 |
Artesia Historical Museum and Art Center | 2 |
Bowers Museum | 2 |
Grand Rapids Public Museum | 2 |
Heard Museum | 2 |
Indiana Univ. | 2 |
Minnesota Historical Society | 2 |
Rocky Ford Historical Museum | 2 |
Stuhr Museum of the Prairie Pioneer | 2 |
The Heritage Museum of the Texas Hill Country | 2 |
Univ. of Kentucky | 2 |
Univ. of North Carolina at Chapel Hill | 2 |
Bridgewater College | 1 |
Cass County Historical Society Museum | 1 |
City of Fort Smith | 1 |
Denver Museum of Nature and Science | 1 |
Elgin Public Museum | 1 |
Florida State Univ. | 1 |
Fort Worth Museum Science and History | 1 |
Grayson County Frontier Village Museum | 1 |
Grout Museum of History and Science | 1 |
Hutchinson County Historical Museum | 1 |
Louisiana Cultural Heritage Museum | 1 |
Louisiana State Exhibit Museum | 1 |
Meeteetse Museum | 1 |
Mutter Museum, College of Physicians of Philadelphia | 1 |
New York Univ. | 1 |
Northwestern State Univ. of Louisiana | 1 |
Putnam Museum | 1 |
Rutgers Univ. | 1 |
Saint Martin's Univ. Waynick Museum | 1 |
Santa Barbara Museum of Natural History | 1 |
Univ. of California, Riverside | 1 |
Univ. of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign | 1 |
Univ. of Tulsa | 1 |
Univ. of Vermont | 1 |
Utah Dept. of Natural Resources | 1 |
Western New Mexico Univ. Museum | 1 |
Wichita County Sherriff's Office | 1 |
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