Office of Hawaiian Affairs Repatriation Records — NAGPRA Database

The Repatriation Database Data from Jan. 6, 2025

Where Native American remains made available for return to the Office of Hawaiian Affairs were taken from

Each county is a peak

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

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

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 23 institutions made Native American remains available for return to the Office of Hawaiian Affairs.

Institution	Remains Made Available for Return To Organization
U.S. Department of Defense	1,616
Bernice P. Bishop Museum	1,396
Harvard University	168
University of Pennsylvania Museum of Archaeology and Anthropology	72
Yale University, Peabody Museum of Natural History	37
Los Angeles County Natural History Museum	19
California State University, Fullerton	16
Peabody Essex Museum	11
University of Hawai'i at Hilo, Department of Anthropology	11
Case Western Reserve University	5
U.S. Department of the Interior	5
Oregon State University	4
University of California, Berkeley	3
University of Iowa, Office of the State Archaeologist	3
University of Kansas	3
University of Oregon Museum of Natural and Cultural History	3
American Museum of Natural History	2
Earlham College	2
Hawai'i Maritime Center	2
Kamehameha Schools	2
California Academy of Sciences	1
U.S. Department of Homeland Security	1
Wistar Institute	1

Timeline of Native American remains made available for return to the Office of Hawaiian Affairs

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.

One institution has not made available for return the remains of at least one Native American that were taken from counties known to be of interest to the Office of Hawaiian Affairs.

These are estimates calculated using remains not made available for return from counties that the organization has previously been eligible to claim remains from, as well as counties that the organization has indicated interest in to the federal government. They are not comprehensive figures. The organization 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 Organization
Mutter Museum, College of Physicians of Philadelphia	1

Counties of interest used in estimate include: Hawaii, Honolulu, Kauai and Maui in Hawaii.

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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Behind ProPublica’s Reporting on Repatriation

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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.