Pawnee Nation Repatriation Records — NAGPRA Database

The Repatriation Database Data from Jan. 6, 2025

Where Native American remains made available for return to the Pawnee Nation 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 267 Native Americans with no location information were made available for return to the Pawnee Nation.

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 34 institutions made Native American remains available for return to the Pawnee Nation.

Institution	Remains Made Available for Return To Tribe
University of Nebraska State Museum	1,842
History Nebraska	719
History Colorado	489
University of Iowa, Office of the State Archaeologist	332
U.S. Department of the Interior	160
State Historical Society of Iowa	142
Kansas State University	127
University of Kansas	103
Hastings Museum	96
University of Tennessee, Knoxville	81
Harvard University	65
University of Colorado Museum	49
U.S. Department of Defense	41
University of Denver, Museum of Anthropology	38
Denver Museum of Nature and Science	26
Kansas State Historical Society	25
Fort Collins Museum of Discovery	17
Chadron State College	8
Colorado Bureau of Investigation	3
Maryland Center for History and Culture (formerly Maryland Historical Society)	3
University of Pennsylvania Museum of Archaeology and Anthropology	3
New York University, College of Dentistry	2
University of Wyoming	2
Yale University, Peabody Museum of Natural History	2
Autry Museum of the American West	1
Brown University, Haffenreffer Museum of Anthropology	1
Carnegie Museum of Natural History	1
Colorado College	1
Field Museum	1
Kansas City Museum	1
Milwaukee Public Museum	1
New Jersey State Museum	1
University of California, Riverside	1
Wisconsin Historical Society	1

Timeline of Native American remains made available for return to the Pawnee Nation

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 1,400 Native Americans that were taken from counties known to be of interest to the Pawnee Nation.

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 Kansas	231
Harvard Univ.	227
Univ. of Tennessee, Knoxville	124
Kansas State Historical Society	123
West Texas A and M Univ.	105
Univ. of Missouri, Columbia	100
Center for American Archeology, Kampsville Archeological Center	95
American Museum of Natural History	82
Univ. of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign	70
Illinois State Museum	64
Trinidad State Junior College	46
Univ. of Arkansas	42
Dept. of Defense	29 Rock Island District (28) Omaha District (1)
Western Colorado Univ.	25
Univ. of Oklahoma	13 Sam Noble Oklahoma Museum of Natural History (12) Oklahoma Archeological Survey (1)
Univ. of Michigan	12
History Nebraska	9
Museum of Texas Tech Univ.	8
Wisconsin Historical Society	8
Univ. of Arizona	7
Hastings Museum	6
Field Museum	3
New York Univ.	3
Univ. of Iowa	3
Fort Lewis College	2
Goshen College	2
Missouri Dept. of Natural Resources	2
Southern Illinois Univ., Carbondale	2
Stuhr Museum of the Prairie Pioneer	2
Dept. of Agriculture	2
Wichita State Univ.	2
Cass County Historical Society Museum	1
Cleveland Museum of Natural History	1
Florida State Univ.	1
Hutchinson County Historical Museum	1
Tioga Point Museum	1
Univ. of California, Berkeley	1
Univ. of Kentucky	1

Counties of interest used in estimate include: Adams, Alamosa, Arapahoe, Baca, Boulder, Crowley, Custer, Denver, Douglas, El Paso, Elbert, Fremont, Gilpin, Huerfano, Jefferson, Kiowa, La Plata, Larimer, Las Animas, Lincoln, Logan, Mesa, Moffat, Morgan, Prowers, Pueblo, Saguache, Sedgwick, Weld and Yuma in Colorado. 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, Webster, Winnebago, Woodbury and Worth in Iowa. Brown in Illinois. Clay, Cloud, Decatur, Dickinson, Doniphan, Geary, Graham, Jewell, Johnson, Leavenworth, Lincoln, Mitchell, Nemaha, Norton, Osborne, Ottawa, Phillips, Republic, Rooks, Saline, Sheridan, Smith, Washington and Wyandotte in Kansas. Andrew, Buchanan and Platte in Missouri. Adams, Antelope, Banner, Blaine, Boone, Box Butte, Boyd, Brown, Buffalo, Burt, Butler, Cass, Cedar, Chase, Cherry, Clay, Colfax, Cuming, Custer, Dakota, Dawes, Dawson, Dixon, Dodge, Douglas, Dundy, Fillmore, Franklin, Frontier, Furnas, Gage, Garden, Garfield, Gosper, Greeley, Hall, Hamilton, Harlan, Hitchcock, Holt, Hooker, Howard, Jefferson, Kearney, Keith, Keya Paha, Knox, Lancaster, Lincoln, Logan, Loup, Madison, Mcpherson, Merrick, Morrill, Nance, Nemaha, Nuckolls, Phelps, Platte, Polk, Red Willow, Richardson, Rock, Saline, Sarpy, Saunders, Scotts Bluff, Seward, Sherman, Sioux, Stanton, Thayer, Thomas, Valley, Washington, Webster, Wheeler and York in Nebraska. Kay, Murray, Osage, Pawnee and Pontotoc in Oklahoma. Hutchinson, Moore and Potter in Texas.

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 Pawnee Nation. 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.