Ho-Chunk Nation of Wisconsin Repatriation Records — NAGPRA Database

The Repatriation Database Data from Jan. 6, 2025

Where Native American remains made available for return to the Ho-Chunk Nation of Wisconsin 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 19 Native Americans with no location information were made available for return to the Ho-Chunk Nation of Wisconsin.

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 30 institutions made Native American remains available for return to the Ho-Chunk Nation of Wisconsin.

Institution	Remains Made Available for Return To Tribe
Illinois State Museum	1,328
Minnesota Indian Affairs Council	1,173
Wisconsin Historical Society	492
Indiana University	481
University of Iowa, Office of the State Archaeologist	414
State Historical Society of Iowa	142
University of Wisconsin, Madison, Department of Anthropology	141
University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign	132
Beloit College, Logan Museum of Anthropology	107
University of Wisconsin, Milwaukee, Department of Anthropology	83
University of Wisconsin, Oshkosh	55
U.S. Department of the Interior	54
Field Museum	25
Grand Rapids Public Museum	18
Oregon State University	15
Denver Museum of Nature and Science	12
Neville Public Museum	11
Coe College	7
Milwaukee Public Museum	3
Evanston History Center	2
Northern Illinois Univ.	2
University of Pennsylvania Museum of Archaeology and Anthropology	2
University of Wisconsin, Stevens Point	2
Berrien County Sheriff's Office	1
Bess Bower Dunn Museum	1
Harvard University	1
Indiana State Museum and Historic Sites Corporation, State of Indiana	1
Santa Barbara Museum of Natural History	1
Sheboygan County Historical Museum	1
University of Colorado Museum	1

Timeline of Native American remains made available for return to the Ho-Chunk Nation of Wisconsin

Tribal and institutional capacity, funding, staffing, regulatory changes, audits, Review Committee decisions and litigation may influence timelines. Under NAGPRA, institutions make Native American remains available for return and determine whether they are culturally affiliated using evidence such as tribal traditional knowledge and biological and archaeological links. From 2010 to 2024, remains could also be returned through disposition based on geographic affiliation. Institutions can also determine that remains are culturally unidentifiable. Tribes may request the transfer of these remains, or they may be reinterred by the institution.

These institutions have not made available for return the remains of at least 5,700 Native Americans that were taken from counties known to be of interest to the Ho-Chunk Nation of Wisconsin.

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
Illinois State Museum	2,262
Indiana Univ.	1,135 Dept. of Anthropology (1,130) Glenn A. Black Lab. of Archeology (5)
Milwaukee Public Museum	854
Univ. of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign	266
Harvard Univ.	185
Center for American Archeology, Kampsville Archeological Center	156
Univ. of Wisconsin, Oshkosh	130
Wisconsin Historical Society	120 Museum Division (83) Historic Preservation Division (37)
Field Museum	78
Oshkosh Public Museum	55
Univ. of Michigan	55
Univ. of Wisconsin, La Crosse	49
Univ. of Minnesota, Duluth	46
Univ. of Arkansas	45
Northwestern Univ.	44
Dept. of the Interior	34 Sherburne National Wildlife Refuge (21) La Crosse District, Upper Mississippi River National Wildlife and Fish Refuge (5) Trempealeau National Wildlife Refuge (4) McGregor District, Upper Mississippi River National Wildlife and Fish Refuge (3) Chautauqua NWR (1)
Dept. of Defense	33 Rock Island District (28) National Museum of Health and Medicine (3) St. Paul District (2)
Minnesota Indian Affairs Council	30
Neville Public Museum	27
Western Illinois Univ.	25
American Museum of Natural History	22
Lawrence Univ.	22
Univ. of Iowa	17
Tippecanoe County Historical Association	8
Purdue Univ.	7
Ball State Univ.	6
Univ. of Pennsylvania	6
Kenosha Public Museum	5
New York State Museum	3
Univ. of Nebraska State Museum	3
Univ. of Wisconsin, Milwaukee	3
Brigham Young Univ.	2
Univ. of Missouri, Columbia	2
Carnegie Museum of Natural History	1
Cleveland Museum of Natural History	1
Indiana State Museum and Historic Sites Corporation	1
Indiana State Univ.	1
Minnesota Historical Society	1
New York Univ.	1
Rochester Museum and Science Center	1
Springfield Science Museum	1
Stuhr Museum of the Prairie Pioneer	1
Univ. of Tennessee, Knoxville	1
Univ. of Wisconsin, Madison	1

Counties of interest used in estimate include: Adams, Allamakee, Boone, Buena Vista, Cass, Cherokee, Chickasaw, Clay, Clayton, Clinton, Crawford, Dallas, Dickinson, Dubuque, Fayette, Floyd, Fremont, Hamilton, Hardin, Humboldt, Ida, Jackson, Jasper, Jefferson, Jones, Lee, Louisa, Lyon, Marion, Marshall, Mills, Monona, Muscatine, O Brien, Page, Plymouth, Polk, Pottawattamie, Sioux, Story, Warren, Webster, Winnebago, Winneshiek, Woodbury and Worth in Iowa. Adams, Brown, Carroll, Cook, Fulton, Grundy, Hancock, Henderson, Jo Daviess, Kane, La Salle, Lake, Lee, Marshall, Ogle, Stephenson, Whiteside, Will and Winnebago in Illinois. Delaware and Tippecanoe in Indiana. Berrien and Marquette in Michigan. Aitkin, Anoka, Becker, Beltrami, Benton, Big Stone, Blue Earth, Brown, Carver, Cass, Clearwater, Crow Wing, Dakota, Douglas, Freeborn, Hennepin, Itasca, Kanabec, Kandiyohi, Kittson, Koochiching, Marshall, Meeker, Mille Lacs, Murray, Nicollet, Norman, Otter Tail, Polk, Pope, Ramsey, Red Lake, Sherburne, St. Louis, Stearns, Todd, Traverse, Wabasha, Wadena, Washington, Watonwan, Wilkin, Winona, Wright and Yellow Medicine in Minnesota. Nance and Sarpy in Nebraska. Adams, Brown, Calumet, Columbia, Crawford, Dane, Dodge, Door, Fond Du Lac, Forest, Grant, Green, Green Lake, Iowa, Jackson, Jefferson, Juneau, Kenosha, Kewaunee, La Crosse, Lafayette, Marathon, Marquette, Milwaukee, Monroe, Oneida, Ozaukee, Pierce, Portage, Richland, Rock, Sauk, Sawyer, Sheboygan, Trempealeau, Vernon, Waukesha, Waupaca, Waushara, Winnebago and Wood in Wisconsin.

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 Ho-Chunk Nation of Wisconsin. 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 Jan. 6, 2025 Additional reporting by Asia Fields, Mary Hudetz and Logan Jaffe for ProPublica and Graham Brewer for NBC News. Additional development by Alec Glassford.