Osage Nation
A federally recognized Indian tribe with headquarters in Oklahoma
Institutions reported making the remains of more than 1,200 Native Americans available for return to the Osage Nation.
The tribe was also eligible to claim more than 2,900 associated funerary objects.
Institutions continue to hold the remains of at least 30,200 Native Americans taken from counties known to be of interest to the tribe.*
Where Native American remains made available for return to the Osage Nation were taken from
These 45 institutions made Native American remains available for return to the Osage Nation.
Timeline of Native American remains made available for return to the Osage Nation
These institutions have not made available for return the remains of at least 30,200 Native Americans that were taken from counties known to be of interest to the Osage Nation.
Institution | Remains Not Made Available for Return That Were Taken From Counties of Interest to the Tribe |
---|---|
Illinois State Museum | 5,996 |
Indiana Univ. | 3,571 Dept. of Anthropology (3,070) Glenn A. Black Lab. of Archeology (501) |
Univ. of Kentucky | 2,545 |
Harvard Univ. | 2,489 Peabody Museum of Archaeology and Ethnology (2,488) Warren Anatomical Museum (1) |
Univ. of Missouri, Columbia | 2,222 |
Univ. of Oklahoma | 2,207 Sam Noble Oklahoma Museum of Natural History (2,188) Oklahoma Archeological Survey (19) |
Center for American Archeology, Kampsville Archeological Center | 1,913 |
Dept. of Defense | 854 St. Louis District (473) Tulsa District (207) Little Rock District (74) Vicksburg District (46) National Museum of Health and Medicine (29) Pittsburgh District (13) Fort Leonard Wood (6) Kansas City District (6) |
Southern Illinois Univ., Carbondale | 783 |
Univ. of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign | 575 |
Cincinnati Museum Center | 517 |
Ohio History Connection | 498 |
Carnegie Museum of Natural History | 484 |
Wickliffe Mounds State Historic Site | 383 |
Univ. of Kansas | 362 |
Field Museum | 347 |
Dept. of the Interior | 291 Natchitoches National Fish Hatchery (100) Buffalo National River (82) Reclamation, Great Plains Region, Nebraska-Kansas Area Office (55) Mammoth Cave NP (18) Mingo National Wildlife Refuge (16) Illinois River National Wildlife and Fish Refuge (10) Ozark National Scenic Riverways (4) Crab Orchard National Wildlife Refuge (3) White River National Wildlife Refuge (2) D'Arbonne National Wildlife Refuge (1) |
Missouri Dept. of Natural Resources | 283 |
Kansas State Historical Society | 276 |
Milwaukee Public Museum | 266 |
Univ. of Louisville | 247 |
West Virginia Division of Culture and History | 239 |
Univ. of Tennessee, Knoxville | 211 Dept. of Anthropology (210) Frank H. McClung Museum (1) |
American Museum of Natural History | 197 |
Missouri Dept. of Transportation | 194 |
Indiana State Univ. | 185 |
California Univ. of Pennsylvania | 183 |
Univ. of Cincinnati | 140 |
Gilcrease Museum | 135 |
State Museum of Pennsylvania | 122 |
West Texas A and M Univ. | 115 |
Univ. of Alabama | 98 |
Univ. of Michigan | 91 |
Robert S. Peabody Institute of Archaeology | 77 |
Wisconsin Historical Society | 71 Museum Division (70) Historic Preservation Division (1) |
Western Kentucky Univ. | 68 Dept. of Folk Studies and Anthropology (66) Kentucky Museum (2) |
Univ. of Pennsylvania | 60 |
Southeast Missouri State Univ. | 59 |
Northern Kentucky Univ. | 52 |
Dept. of Agriculture | 48 Shawnee NF (25) Mark Twain NF (14) Hoosier NF (5) Wayne NF (4) |
Cleveland Museum of Natural History | 47 |
Mutter Museum, College of Physicians of Philadelphia | 47 |
Mississippi Dept. of Archives and History | 44 |
Virginia Dept. of Historic Resources | 43 |
Yale Univ. | 43 |
Univ. of Arkansas | 39 |
Indiana State Museum and Historic Sites Corporation | 34 |
Western Illinois Univ. | 26 |
New York State Museum | 25 |
Univ. of Texas at Austin | 23 |
Univ. of Nebraska State Museum | 22 |
Univ. of Iowa | 21 |
Univ. of Missouri, St. Louis | 21 |
Missouri State Univ. | 20 |
Stanford Univ. Heritage Services | 19 |
Grand Rapids Public Museum | 16 |
Univ. of Central Missouri | 16 |
Temple Univ. | 15 |
Dayton Museum of Natural History | 14 |
Ball State Univ. | 13 |
Dept. of Energy | 13 |
Hastings Museum | 11 |
Lawrence Univ. | 11 |
No Man's Land Historical Society | 11 |
Brigham Young Univ. | 10 |
Kansas State Univ. | 10 |
Ohio Univ. | 9 |
U.S. Environmental Protection Agency | 9 |
New Harmony Workingmen's Institute | 8 |
San Bernardino County Museum | 8 |
Washington Univ. | 8 |
Wichita State Univ. | 8 |
Filson Historical Society | 7 |
Missouri Historical Society | 7 |
Oshkosh Public Museum | 7 |
Tioga Point Museum | 7 |
Univ. of Memphis | 7 |
Univ. of North Texas | 6 |
Clark County Historical Museum | 5 |
Houston Museum of Natural Science | 5 |
Museum of Texas Tech Univ. | 5 |
Nassau County Dept. of Parks and Recreation | 5 |
Univ. of Akron | 5 |
Goshen College | 4 |
New York Univ. | 4 |
Univ. of Louisiana at Monroe | 4 |
Earlham College | 3 |
Kansas City Museum | 3 |
Minnesota Indian Affairs Council | 3 |
Rochester Museum and Science Center | 3 |
St. Joseph Museums, Inc. | 3 |
Univ. of Florida | 3 |
Univ. of Southern Indiana | 3 |
Univ. of Wisconsin, Milwaukee | 3 |
Louisiana State Exhibit Museum | 2 |
Madison County Historical Society | 2 |
Pennsylvania State Univ. | 2 |
Texas A and M Univ. | 2 |
Texas Dept. of Transportation | 2 |
Trinidad State Junior College | 2 |
Univ. of California, Berkeley | 2 |
Bridgewater College | 1 |
Buffalo Museum of Science | 1 |
City of Fort Smith | 1 |
Hutchinson County Historical Museum | 1 |
Mississippi State Univ. | 1 |
Murray State Univ. | 1 |
Northwestern State Univ. of Louisiana | 1 |
Palmer Foundation for Chiropractic History | 1 |
Putnam Museum | 1 |
Springfield Science Museum | 1 |
Stuhr Museum of the Prairie Pioneer | 1 |
Univ. of California, Riverside | 1 |
Univ. of North Carolina at Chapel Hill | 1 |
Univ. of Tulsa | 1 |
Univ. of Wisconsin, Madison | 1 |
Wayne State Univ. | 1 |
Know how an institution is handling repatriation? Have a personal story to share? We'd like to hear from you.
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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