The Repatriation Database Data from Nov. 29, 2023

Three Affiliated Tribes of the Fort Berthold Reservation, North Dakota

A federally recognized Indian tribe with headquarters in North Dakota

Institutions reported making the remains of more than 6,100 Native Americans available for return to the Three Affiliated Tribes of the Fort Berthold Reservation.

The tribe was also eligible to claim more than 23,600 associated funerary objects.

Institutions continue to hold the remains of at least 800 Native Americans taken from counties known to be of interest to the tribe.*

Where Native American remains made available for return to the Three Affiliated Tribes of the Fort Berthold Reservation 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 433 Native Americans with no location information were made available for return to the Three Affiliated Tribes of the Fort Berthold Reservation.

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 45 institutions made Native American remains available for return to the Three Affiliated Tribes of the Fort Berthold Reservation.

Institution	Remains Made Available for Return To Tribe
University of Tennessee, Knoxville	2,146
University of Nebraska State Museum	820
History Nebraska	600
History Colorado	479
U.S. Department of Justice	422
U.S. Department of Defense	388
University of Iowa, Office of the State Archaeologist	334
State Historical Society of Iowa	167
Indiana University	155
South Dakota State Historical Society, State Archaeological Research Center	119
U.S. Department of the Interior	118
Harvard University	55
University of Colorado Museum	54
University of Wyoming	54
Beloit College, Logan Museum of Anthropology	48
Denver Museum of Nature and Science	42
Hastings Museum	34
Kansas State University	28
Carter County Museum	14
American Museum of Natural History	10
Columbia University, Department of Anthropology	10
American University	8
Chadron State College	8
University of Kansas	8
Coe College	7
Milwaukee Public Museum	7
University of California, Berkeley	6
University of Montana	4
Colorado Bureau of Investigation	3
New York University, College of Dentistry	2
Pacific Lutheran University	2
University of Denver, Museum of Anthropology	2
University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign	2
Wisconsin Historical Society	2
Yale University, Peabody Museum of Natural History	2
Autry Museum of the American West	1
Filson Historical Society	1
Madison County Historical Society	1
Oregon State University	1
Robert S. Peabody Institute of Archaeology, Phillips Academy	1
Rochester Museum and Science Center	1
Santa Barbara Museum of Natural History	1
Sioux City Public Museum	1
State Historical Society of North Dakota	1
U.S. Department of Agriculture	1

Timeline of Native American remains made available for return to the Three Affiliated Tribes of the Fort Berthold Reservation

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 800 Native Americans that were taken from counties known to be of interest to the Three Affiliated Tribes of the Fort Berthold Reservation.

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
Harvard Univ.	318
Dept. of Defense	104 Rock Island District (72) Omaha District (31) National Museum of Health and Medicine (1)
American Museum of Natural History	80
Trinidad State Junior College	46
Center for American Archeology, Kampsville Archeological Center	45
Univ. of Iowa	42
Western Colorado Univ.	25
Univ. of Wyoming	22
Fort Lewis College	21
Dept. of the Interior	19 Wyoming State Office (11) BIA (3) Reclamation, Great Plains Region, Wyoming Area Office (3) Reclamation, Great Plains Region, Montana Area Office (1) Reclamation, Great Plains Region, Nebraska-Kansas Area Office (1)
Hastings Museum	14
Univ. of Nebraska State Museum	14
Illinois State Museum	13
South Dakota State Historical Society, State Archaeological Research Center	13
Univ. of Michigan	13
History Nebraska	11
Grand Rapids Public Museum	9
Univ. of Tennessee, Knoxville	8
Wisconsin Historical Society	8
Kansas State Historical Society	7
Univ. of Arizona	7
Ball State Univ.	6
Univ. of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign	6
Univ. of Kansas	6
Field Museum	4
Buffalo Bill Center of the West	3
Montana State Univ., Museum of the Rockies	3
New York Univ.	3
Dept. of Agriculture	3 Rio Grande NF (2) Dakota Prairie Grasslands (1)
Brigham Young Univ.	2
Montana Historical Society	2
Southern Illinois Univ., Carbondale	2
Stuhr Museum of the Prairie Pioneer	2
Univ. of Missouri, Columbia	2
Wichita State Univ.	2
Cass County Historical Society Museum	1
Cleveland Museum of Natural History	1
Denver Museum of Nature and Science	1
Florida State Univ.	1
Natural History Museum of Utah	1
Rochester Museum and Science Center	1
Springfield Science Museum	1
Tioga Point Museum	1
Univ. of Kentucky	1
West Texas A and M Univ.	1

Counties of interest used in estimate include: Adams, Alamosa, Arapahoe, Baca, Boulder, Crowley, Custer, Denver, Douglas, El Paso, Fremont, Gilpin, Huerfano, Jefferson, Kiowa, La Plata, Larimer, Las Animas, Lincoln, Logan, Mesa, Moffat, Morgan, 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, Jefferson, Jones, Lee, Louisa, Lyon, Marion, Mills, Monona, Muscatine, O Brien, Page, Plymouth, Polk, Pottawattamie, Sioux, Story, Webster, Winnebago, Woodbury and Worth in Iowa. Hancock and Jo Daviess in Illinois. Delaware in Indiana. Doniphan and Republic in Kansas. Andrew in Missouri. Big Horn, Carter, Custer, Dawson, Fallon, Meagher, Powder River, Prairie, Richland and Wibaux 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, Merrick, Morrill, Nance, Nemaha, Platte, Red Willow, Richardson, Sarpy, Saunders, Scotts Bluff, Sherman, Sioux, Stanton, Thayer, Valley, Washington and Webster in Nebraska. Big Horn, Campbell, Carbon, Crook, Fremont, Hot Springs, Johnson, Park, Sheridan and Washakie in Wyoming

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 Three Affiliated Tribes of the Fort Berthold Reservation. 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.