Little River Band of Ottawa Indians Repatriation Records — NAGPRA Database

The Repatriation Database Data from Nov. 29, 2023

Where Native American remains made available for return to the Little River Band of Ottawa 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

Note: Remains of 15 Native Americans with no location information were made available for return to the Little River Band of Ottawa Indians.

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 38 institutions made Native American remains available for return to the Little River Band of Ottawa Indians.

Institution	Remains Made Available for Return To Tribe
University of Michigan Museum of Anthropology	786
Grand Valley State University	154
Michigan State University	150
Grand Rapids Public Museum	146
Central Michigan University, Museum of Cultural and Natural History	144
Harvard University	98
Wayne State University	57
University of Toledo	46
Cranbrook Institute of Science	39
University of Wisconsin, Milwaukee, Department of Anthropology	38
Bess Bower Dunn Museum	34
Beloit College, Logan Museum of Anthropology	16
Denver Museum of Nature and Science	15
Wisconsin Historical Society	13
Detroit Institute of Arts	12
Princeton University	12
Western Michigan University, Department of Anthropology	11
Besser Museum for Northeast Michigan	9
Lakeshore Museum Center	9
Sloan Museum	9
Michigan History Center	8
Michigan State Police	8
Museum of Ojibwa Culture and Marquette Mission Park - City of St. Ignace	8
Toledo Zoological Society	8
Historical Society of Saginaw County, Inc.	7
Michigan State Historic Preservation Office	7
Hastings Museum	5
Michigan Department of Transportation	4
City of Saugatuck	3
MetroParks of the Toledo Area	3
American Museum of Natural History	2
University of Notre Dame, Department of Anthropology	2
Berrien County Sheriff's Office	1
City of Traverse City	1
Illinois State Museum	1
Sandusky Library, Follett House Museum	1
U.S. Department of Agriculture	1
University of Pennsylvania Museum of Archaeology and Anthropology	1

Timeline of Native American remains made available for return to the Little River Band of Ottawa 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 1,600 Native Americans that were taken from counties known to be of interest to the Little River Band of Ottawa 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 Michigan	540
Milwaukee Public Museum	288
Illinois State Museum	165
Ohio History Connection	143
Univ. of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign	128
Univ. of Toledo	111
Indiana Univ.	52
Wisconsin Historical Society	52 Museum Division (30) Historic Preservation Division (22)
Neville Public Museum	26
Cleveland Museum of Natural History	24
Grand Rapids Public Museum	23
Lawrence Univ.	22
Michigan State Historic Preservation Office	15
Wayne State Univ.	14
Heidelberg Univ.	13
Cranbrook Institute of Science	11
Oshkosh Public Museum	7
Univ. of Pennsylvania	6
Field Museum	5
Harvard Univ.	5
Kenosha Public Museum	5
Elgin Public Museum	3
Alma College	2
Cleveland State Univ.	2
Putnam Museum	1
Dept. of Defense	1
Univ. of Notre Dame	1
Univ. of Tennessee, Knoxville	1
Univ. of Wisconsin, Milwaukee	1

Counties of interest used in estimate include: Kane, La Salle, Lake, Mchenry and Winnebago in Illinois. La Porte in Indiana. Allegan, Alpena, Antrim, Arenac, Barry, Benzie, Berrien, Branch, Calhoun, Cass, Charlevoix, Chippewa, Delta, Emmet, Genesee, Grand Traverse, Hillsdale, Huron, Ingham, Ionia, Isabella, Jackson, Kalamazoo, Kent, Lake, Lapeer, Leelanau, Lenawee, Livingston, Mackinac, Macomb, Manistee, Mason, Mecosta, Missaukee, Monroe, Montcalm, Montmorency, Muskegon, Newaygo, Oakland, Oceana, Osceola, Otsego, Ottawa, Roscommon, Saginaw, Sanilac, Shiawassee, St. Clair, St. Joseph, Tuscola, Van Buren, Washtenaw, Wayne and Wexford in Michigan. Erie, Lucas and Madison in Ohio. Brown, Crawford, Door, Grant, Jefferson, Kenosha, Milwaukee, Rock and Waukesha 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 Little River Band of Ottawa 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.