Spirit Lake Tribe Repatriation Records — NAGPRA Database

The Repatriation Database Data from Nov. 29, 2023

Where Native American remains made available for return to the Spirit Lake Tribe 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 141 Native Americans with no location information were made available for return to the Spirit Lake Tribe.

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 30 institutions made Native American remains available for return to the Spirit Lake Tribe.

Institution	Remains Made Available for Return To Tribe
University of Nebraska State Museum	820
History Nebraska	586
Minnesota Indian Affairs Council	476
U.S. Department of Justice	412
Beloit College, Logan Museum of Anthropology	104
University of Iowa, Office of the State Archaeologist	94
Wisconsin Historical Society	87
U.S. Department of Defense	43
University of Wisconsin, Milwaukee, Department of Anthropology	39
University of Denver, Museum of Anthropology	35
U.S. Department of the Interior	32
Carter County Museum	14
University of Wisconsin, Oshkosh	13
Chadron State College	8
Coe College	7
Denver Museum of Nature and Science	5
Harvard University	4
Mutter Museum, College of Physicians of Philadelphia	2
State Historical Society of North Dakota	2
University of Wisconsin, Madison, Department of Anthropology	2
American Museum of Natural History	1
Field Museum	1
Grand Rapids Public Museum	1
History Colorado	1
Missouri Historical Society	1
Robert S. Peabody Institute of Archaeology, Phillips Academy	1
Sheboygan County Historical Museum	1
State Historical Society of Iowa	1
University of Pennsylvania Museum of Archaeology and Anthropology	1
Yale University, Peabody Museum of Natural History	1

Timeline of Native American remains made available for return to the Spirit Lake Tribe

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 1,400 Native Americans that were taken from counties known to be of interest to the Spirit Lake Tribe.

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
Milwaukee Public Museum	532
Harvard Univ.	201
Univ. of Wisconsin, Oshkosh	130
Wisconsin Historical Society	88 Museum Division (51) Historic Preservation Division (37)
Minnesota Indian Affairs Council	69
Oshkosh Public Museum	55
Illinois State Museum	51
Univ. of Wisconsin, La Crosse	49
Center for American Archeology, Kampsville Archeological Center	45
Univ. of Minnesota, Duluth	38
South Dakota State Historical Society, State Archaeological Research Center	28
Neville Public Museum	26
American Museum of Natural History	25
Dept. of the Interior	23 Sherburne National Wildlife Refuge (15) Upper Mississippi River National Wildlife Refuge (4) Trempealeau National Wildlife Refuge (3) Reclamation, Great Plains Region, Nebraska-Kansas Area Office (1)
Lawrence Univ.	22
Grand Rapids Public Museum	15
Univ. of Michigan	14
Hastings Museum	9
Univ. of Wyoming	7
Ball State Univ.	6
Univ. of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign	6
Goodhue County Historical Society	5
Kenosha Public Museum	5
Univ. of Nebraska State Museum	5
Dept. of Defense	4 St. Paul District (2) National Museum of Health and Medicine (1) Omaha District (1)
Brigham Young Univ.	2
Rochester Museum and Science Center	2
Stuhr Museum of the Prairie Pioneer	2
Univ. of Iowa	2
Univ. of Tennessee, Knoxville	2 Dept. of Anthropology (1) Frank H. McClung Museum (1)
Carnegie Museum of Natural History	1
Cass County Historical Society Museum	1
Cleveland Museum of Natural History	1
Denver Museum of Nature and Science	1
Field Museum	1
Indiana Univ.	1
Minnesota Historical Society	1
Montana Historical Society	1
New York Univ.	1
Putnam Museum	1
Springfield Science Museum	1
Tioga Point Museum	1
Univ. of California, Berkeley	1
Univ. of Kentucky	1
Univ. of Missouri, Columbia	1
Univ. of Pennsylvania	1
Univ. of Wisconsin, Milwaukee	1

Counties of interest used in estimate include: Baca, Douglas, Elbert, Jefferson, Lincoln, Prowers and Weld in Colorado. Allamakee, Butler, Cerro Gordo, Chickasaw, Dickinson, Emmet, Floyd, Franklin, Hancock, Howard, Humboldt, Kossuth, Lyon, Mitchell, O'brien, Osceola, Palo Alto, Pocahontas, Sioux, Webster, Winnebago, Winneshiek, Woodbury, Worth and Wright in Iowa. Hancock, Jo Daviess and Rock Island in Illinois. Delaware in Indiana. Anoka, Big Stone, Blue Earth, Brown, Carver, Cass, Chippewa, Chisago, Clay, Cottonwood, Crow Wing, Dakota, Dodge, Douglas, Faribault, Fillmore, Freeborn, Goodhue, Grant, Hennepin, Houston, Jackson, Kandiyohi, Lac Qui Parle, Le Sueur, Lincoln, Lyon, Martin, Mcleod, Meeker, Mille Lacs, Mower, Murray, Nicollet, Nobles, Olmsted, Otter Tail, Pipestone, Polk, Pope, Ramsey, Redwood, Renville, Rice, Rock, Scott, Sherburne, Sibley, Stearns, Steele, Stevens, Swift, Traverse, Wabasha, Waseca, Washington, Watonwan, Wilkin, Winona, Wright and Yellow Medicine in Minnesota. Big Horn, Carter and Fallon in Montana. Adams, Antelope, Banner, Boone, Box Butte, Boyd, Buffalo, Burt, Cass, Cedar, Chase, Cherry, Cuming, Custer, Dakota, Dawes, Dawson, Dixon, Dodge, Douglas, Dundy, Fillmore, Franklin, Frontier, Furnas, Gage, Garden, Garfield, Hall, Harlan, Hitchcock, Holt, Hooker, Howard, Keith, Keya Paha, Knox, Lancaster, Lincoln, Madison, Mcpherson, Morrill, Nance, Nemaha, Platte, Red Willow, Richardson, Sarpy, Saunders, Scotts Bluff, Sherman, Sioux, Stanton, Thayer, Valley, Washington and Webster in Nebraska. Brown, Buffalo, Crawford, Door, Dunn, Forest, Grant, Green Lake, Jackson, Jefferson, Kenosha, La Crosse, Marathon, Milwaukee, Oneida, Pepin, Pierce, Richland, Rock, Sheboygan, Trempealeau, Vernon, Waukesha and Winnebago 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 Spirit Lake Tribe. 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.