Mississippi Band of Choctaw Indians Repatriation Records — NAGPRA Database

The Repatriation Database Data from Nov. 29, 2023

Where Native American remains made available for return to the Mississippi Band of Choctaw 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 five Native Americans with no location information were made available for return to the Mississippi Band of Choctaw 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 23 institutions made Native American remains available for return to the Mississippi Band of Choctaw Indians.

Institution	Remains Made Available for Return To Tribe
Mississippi Dept. of Archives and History	496
U.S. Department of the Interior	197
U.S. Department of Defense	174
Mississippi State University, Cobb Institute of Archaeology	157
Florida State University, Department of Anthropology	72
University of Southern Mississippi, Department of Anthropology and Sociology	52
Alabama Department of Archives & History	37
Columbus State University	28
Louisiana State University	26
Indiana University	21
University of Oklahoma	15
University of South Alabama, Center for Archaeological Studies	7
Bryn Mawr College	3
University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill	3
Baylor University, Mayborn Museum Complex	2
Denver Museum of Nature and Science	2
University of Denver, Museum of Anthropology	2
University of Pennsylvania Museum of Archaeology and Anthropology	2
Appalachian State University, Department of Anthropology	1
Harvard University	1
New York University, College of Dentistry	1
University of Michigan Museum of Anthropology	1
Yale University, Peabody Museum of Natural History	1

Timeline of Native American remains made available for return to the Mississippi Band of Choctaw 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 2,600 Native Americans that were taken from counties known to be of interest to the Mississippi Band of Choctaw 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
Mississippi Dept. of Archives and History	548
Florida Dept. of State	352
Harvard Univ.	224
Dept. of the Interior	222 Natchitoches National Fish Hatchery (100) Tensas River National Wildlife Refuge (66) St. Marks National Wildlife Refuge (30) Jean Lafitte NHP and PRES (16) Southeast Archeological Center (5) White River National Wildlife Refuge (2) Bayou Sauvage National Wildlife Refuge (1) D'Arbonne National Wildlife Refuge (1) St. Vincent National Wildlife Refuge (1)
Dept. of Defense	200 Tulsa District (109) Vicksburg District (51) Mobile District (25) National Museum of Health and Medicine (13) Hurlburt Air Field (2)
Mississippi State Univ.	191
Univ. of Alabama	162
Yale Univ.	110
Univ. of Louisiana at Monroe	106
Georgia Dept. of Natural Resources	85
American Museum of Natural History	59
Louisiana State Univ.	58 Museum of Natural Science (53) Dept. of Anthropology (5)
Univ. of South Alabama	58
Univ. of Pennsylvania	36
Univ. of Southern Mississippi	35
Univ. of Florida, Florida Museum of Natural History + Florida Dept. of State	25
Univ. of Texas at Austin	23
Louisiana Dept. of Culture, Recreation, and Tourism	21
Alabama Dept. of Archives & History	20
Poverty Point World Heritage Site	17
Univ. of Oklahoma	15 Sam Noble Oklahoma Museum of Natural History (14) Oklahoma Archeological Survey (1)
Florida State Univ.	14
Univ. of West Florida	13
Univ. of Florida	9
Univ. of North Texas	6
Robert S. Peabody Institute of Archaeology	5
Univ. of Tennessee, Knoxville	5 Frank H. McClung Museum (3) Dept. of Anthropology (2)
Auburn Univ.	4
Columbus Museum	4
Milwaukee Public Museum	3
Gilcrease Museum	2
Louisiana Cultural Heritage Museum	2
Texas A and M Univ.	2
Univ. of Arkansas	2
Louisiana State Exhibit Museum	1
No Man's Land Historical Society	1
Northwestern State Univ. of Louisiana	1
Univ. of Memphis	1
Univ. of Michigan	1

Counties of interest used in estimate include: Autauga, Baldwin, Barbour, Bibb, Bullock, Butler, Choctaw, Clarke, Coffee, Conecuh, Covington, Crenshaw, Dale, Dallas, Escambia, Geneva, Greene, Hale, Henry, Houston, Lowndes, Marengo, Mobile, Monroe, Montgomery, Perry, Pickens, Pike, Russell, Sumter, Tuscaloosa, Washington and Wilcox in Alabama. Arkansas, Ashley, Bradley, Calhoun, Chicot, Cleveland, Dallas, Desha, Drew, Grant, Jefferson, Lincoln, Lonoke, Monroe, Ouachita, Phillips, Prairie, Pulaski, Saline and Union in Arkansas. Bay, Calhoun, Escambia, Franklin, Gadsden, Gulf, Holmes, Jackson, Jefferson, Leon, Liberty, Okaloosa, Santa Rosa, Wakulla, Walton and Washington in Florida. Baker, Calhoun, Clay, Decatur, Early, Grady, Miller, Mitchell, Quitman, Randolph and Seminole in Georgia. Acadia, Allen, Ascension, Assumption, Avoyelles, Beauregard, Bienville, Bossier, Caddo, Calcasieu, Caldwell, Cameron, Catahoula, Claiborne, Concordia, De Soto, East Baton Rouge, East Carroll, East Feliciana, Evangeline, Franklin, Grant, Iberia, Iberville, Jackson, Jefferson, Jefferson Davis, Lafayette, Lafourche, Lasalle, Lincoln, Livingston, Madison, Morehouse, Natchitoches, Orleans, Ouachita, Plaquemines, Pointe Coupee, Rapides, Red River, Richland, Sabine, St. Bernard, St. Charles, St. Helena, St. James, St. John The Baptist, St. Landry, St. Martin, St. Mary, St. Tammany, Tangipahoa, Tensas, Terrebonne, Union, Vermilion, Vernon, Washington, Webster, West Baton Rouge, West Carroll, West Feliciana and Winn in Louisiana. Adams, Amite, Attala, Bolivar, Calhoun, Carroll, Choctaw, Claiborne, Clarke, Clay, Coahoma, Copiah, Covington, De Soto, Forrest, Franklin, George, Greene, Grenada, Hancock, Harrison, Hinds, Holmes, Humphreys, Issaquena, Jackson, Jasper, Jefferson, Jefferson Davis, Jones, Kemper, Lafayette, Lamar, Lauderdale, Lawrence, Leake, Lee, Leflore, Lincoln, Lowndes, Madison, Marion, Monroe, Montgomery, Neshoba, Newton, Noxubee, Oktibbeha, Panola, Pearl River, Perry, Pike, Pontotoc, Prentiss, Quitman, Rankin, Scott, Sharkey, Simpson, Smith, Stone, Sunflower, Tallahatchie, Tate, Tunica, Union, Walthall, Warren, Washington, Wayne, Webster, Wilkinson, Winston, Yalobusha and Yazoo in Mississippi. Bryan, Caddo, Carter, Coal, Garvin, Marshall, Mcclain and Pontotoc in Oklahoma. Lauderdale 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.