Chickasaw Nation Repatriation Records — NAGPRA Database

The Repatriation Database Data from Nov. 29, 2023

Where Native American remains made available for return to the Chickasaw Nation 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

Note: Remains of six Native Americans with no location information were made available for return to the Chickasaw Nation.

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 51 institutions made Native American remains available for return to the Chickasaw Nation.

Institution	Remains Made Available for Return To Tribe
Tennessee Valley Authority	11,837
University of Alabama Museums	10,651
Mississippi Dept. of Archives and History	495
University of California, San Diego	478
U.S. Department of the Interior	384
Tennessee Department of Environment and Conservation, Division of Archaeology	259
U.S. Department of Defense	231
Vanderbilt University	208
University of Memphis	178
University of Tennessee, Knoxville	171
National Guard Bureau, Air National Guard	96
Murray State University, Archaeology Laboratory	47
Gilcrease Museum	38
Columbus State University	28
Mississippi State University, Cobb Institute of Archaeology	22
New York University, College of Dentistry	18
Harvard University	16
University of Louisville	16
University of Oklahoma	16
University of Iowa, Office of the State Archaeologist	5
University of Michigan Museum of Anthropology	5
Indiana University	4
Milwaukee Public Museum	4
University of Denver, Museum of Anthropology	4
Bryn Mawr College	3
Mercyhurst Univ.	3
Alabama Department of Transportation	2
Anniston Museum of Natural History	2
Denver Museum of Nature and Science	2
Illinois State Museum	2
Kentucky Historical Society	2
Louisiana State University	2
University of Pennsylvania Museum of Archaeology and Anthropology	2
University of South Alabama, Center for Archaeological Studies	2
Western Kentucky University	2
American Museum of Natural History	1
Amherst College, Beneski Museum of Natural History	1
Appalachian State University, Department of Anthropology	1
Auburn University	1
Baylor University, Mayborn Museum Complex	1
Charleston Museum	1
Dartmouth College, Hood Museum of Art	1
Grand Rapids Public Museum	1
Memphis Pink Palace Museum	1
Museum of Us	1
Robert S. Peabody Institute of Archaeology, Phillips Academy	1
University of Arizona, Arizona State Museum	1
University of Missouri, Columbia, Museum of Anthropology	1
University of Southern Mississippi, Department of Anthropology and Sociology	1
Wickliffe Mounds State Historic Site	1
Yale University, Peabody Museum of Natural History	1

Timeline of Native American remains made available for return to the Chickasaw Nation

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 6,200 Native Americans that were taken from counties known to be of interest to the Chickasaw Nation.

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 Tennessee, Knoxville	3,128 Frank H. McClung Museum (2,277) Dept. of Anthropology (851)
Univ. of Alabama	1,744
Wickliffe Mounds State Historic Site	383
Univ. of Louisville	200
Tennessee Dept. of Environment and Conservation	181
Dept. of Defense	122 Tulsa District (109) National Museum of Health and Medicine (7) Nashville District (6)
Mississippi Dept. of Archives and History	103
Vanderbilt Univ.	86
Univ. of Kentucky	66
Harvard Univ.	33
Ohio History Connection	28
Robert S. Peabody Institute of Archaeology	20
Dept. of the Interior	18 Tennessee National Wildlife Refuge (13) Southeast Archeological Center (5)
Univ. of Pennsylvania	18
Univ. of Oklahoma	16 Sam Noble Oklahoma Museum of Natural History (15) Oklahoma Archeological Survey (1)
Northern Kentucky Univ.	8
Alabama Dept. of Archives & History	6
Univ. of Memphis	6
Univ. of North Texas	6
Western Kentucky Univ.	6
Mississippi State Univ.	5
Columbus Museum	4
State Museum of Pennsylvania	4
Beloit College	3
American Museum of Natural History	2
Bridgewater College	2
Univ. of Florida	2
Univ. of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign	2
Univ. of Tennessee at Chattanooga	2
Indiana Univ.	1
Murray State Univ.	1
No Man's Land Historical Society	1
Wisconsin Historical Society	1

Counties of interest used in estimate include: Colbert, Cullman, Fayette, Franklin, Greene, Hale, Jackson, Lamar, Lauderdale, Lawrence, Limestone, Madison, Marion, Marshall, Morgan, Russell, Tuscaloosa, Walker and Winston in Alabama. Camden in Georgia. Ballard, Calloway, Carlisle, Christian, Fulton, Graves, Hickman, Jefferson, Livingston, Lyon, Marshall, Mason, Mccracken and Trigg in Kentucky. Adams, Alcorn, Benton, Calhoun, Chickasaw, Clay, De Soto, Desoto, Hancock, Itawamba, Jefferson, Lafayette, Lee, Lowndes, Madison, Marshall, Monroe, Panola, Pontotoc, Prentiss, Quitman, Tallahatchie, Tate, Tippah, Tishomingo, Tunica, Union, Warren, Washington, Webster and Yalobusha in Mississippi. Jefferson in Ohio. Bryan, Caddo, Carter, Coal, Comanche, Garvin, Grady, Jefferson, Johnston, Love, Marshall, Mcclain, Murray, Pontotoc and Stephens in Oklahoma. Anderson, Bedford, Benton, Bradley, Campbell, Carroll, Chester, Claiborne, Coffee, Crockett, Davidson, Decatur, Dickson, Dyer, Fayette, Franklin, Gibson, Giles, Grundy, Hamilton, Hancock, Hardeman, Hardin, Haywood, Henderson, Henry, Hickman, Houston, Humphreys, Jefferson, Lake, Lauderdale, Lawrence, Lewis, Lincoln, Loudon, Madison, Marion, Marshall, Maury, Mcminn, Mcnairy, Meigs, Monroe, Moore, Obion, Perry, Polk, Rhea, Roane, Rutherford, Shelby, Stewart, Tipton, Trousdale, Wayne, Weakley and Williamson in Tennessee.

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.

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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.