Buena Vista Rancheria of Me-Wuk Indians Repatriation Records — NAGPRA Database

The Repatriation Database Data from Nov. 29, 2023

Where Native American remains made available for return to the Buena Vista Rancheria of Me-Wuk Indians were taken from

Each county is a peak

Height is amount of remains taken from county and made available by institutions for return to tribe

No remains taken from these counties made available for return to tribe

Institution that made remains available for return

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.

These 18 institutions made Native American remains available for return to the Buena Vista Rancheria of Me-Wuk Indians.

Institution	Remains Made Available for Return To Tribe
University of California, Berkeley	4,612
California State University, Sacramento, Department of Anthropology	771
California Department of Transportation	508
California State University, Long Beach	255
University of California, Davis	57
California Department of Parks and Recreation	28
University of the Pacific	21
State Center Community College District - Reedly College	18
University of Nevada, Las Vegas, Department of Anthropology	11
New York University, College of Dentistry	4
U.S. Department of the Interior	4
Autry Museum of the American West	3
Beloit College, Logan Museum of Anthropology	3
State Center Community College District - Fresno City College	2
University of Massachusetts, Amherst, Department of Anthropology	2
Michigan State University	1
Nevada State Museum	1
University of Oregon Museum of Natural and Cultural History	1

Timeline of Native American remains made available for return to the Buena Vista Rancheria of Me-Wuk Indians

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.

These institutions have not made available for return the remains of at least 4,700 Native Americans that were taken from counties known to be of interest to the Buena Vista Rancheria of Me-Wuk Indians.

These are estimates calculated using remains not made available for return from counties that the tribe has previously been eligible to claim remains from, as well as counties that the tribe has indicated interest in to the federal government. They are not comprehensive figures. The tribe may not wish to claim the remains, and other tribes may also seek to claim them.

Institution	Remains Not Made Available for Return That Were Taken From Counties of Interest to the Tribe
Univ. of California, Berkeley	2,938
San Jose State Univ.	426
San Francisco State Univ.	338
Sonoma State Univ.	267
Dept. of Agriculture	99 Stanislaus NF (88) Sierra NF (11)
Univ. of California, Davis	96
California Dept. of Parks and Recreation	94
Filoli Center	85
Cal. State, Easy Bay	66
Cal. State, Sacramento	50
Harvard Univ.	48
Foothill-De Anza Community College District	35
Nevada State Museum	21
Dept. of Defense	21 Naval Air Station, Fallon (2) National Museum of Health and Medicine (1)
California Dept. of Transportation	19
East Bay Municipal Utility District	19
Oakland Museum of California	11
de Young Museum	9
Rochester Museum and Science Center	9
Los Angeles County Natural History Museum	7
San Mateo County Community College District	7
Univ. of Pennsylvania	5
San Bernardino County Museum	4
Dept. of the Interior	4 Lake Mead NRA (1) Nevada State Office (1) Reclamation, Lower Colorado Region (1) Stillwater National Wildlife Refuge (1)
West Valley College	4
Field Museum	3
Hastings Museum	3
Los Rios Community College District	3
Santa Clara Univ.	3
Santa Cruz Museum of Natural History	3
American Museum of Natural History	2
Grand Rapids Public Museum	2
Klamath County Museum	2
Nassau County Dept. of Parks and Recreation	2
Natural History Museum of Utah	2
Robert S. Peabody Institute of Archaeology	2
Univ. of Akron	2
Yale Univ.	2
City of Santa Clara, Headen-Inman House	1
Diablo Valley College	1
Illinois State Museum	1
Missouri Historical Society	1
Palo Alto Junior Museum and Zoo	1
Peabody Essex Museum	1
Santa Barbara Museum of Natural History	1
Univ. of California, Los Angeles	1
Univ. of California, Riverside	1
Univ. of Nevada, Las Vegas	1
Univ. of North Carolina at Chapel Hill	1
Univ. of Tennessee, Knoxville	1

Counties of interest used in estimate include: Alameda, Amador, Calaveras, Contra Costa, El Dorado, Fresno, Kings, Merced, Placer, Sacramento, San Francisco, San Joaquin, San Mateo, Santa Clara, Santa Cruz, Tuolumne and Yolo in California. Churchill, Clark, Lincoln, Nye, Washoe and White Pine in Nevada.

Search for institutions holding Native American remains and tribes seeking to reclaim them

Try the University of California, Berkeley, the Chickasaw Nation or Arizona.

Institutions that have not submitted information to the federal government are not listed.

These tribes were also listed when institutions culturally affiliated Native American remains to the Buena Vista Rancheria of Me-Wuk Indians. 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.

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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

by Ash Ngu and Andrea Suozzo Jan. 11, 2023 Data from Nov. 29, 2023 Additional reporting by Asia Fields, Mary Hudetz and Logan Jaffe for ProPublica and Graham Brewer for NBC News. Additional development by Alec Glassford.