The Repatriation Database Data from Nov. 29, 2023

White Earth Band of Minnesota Chippewa Tribe, Minnesota

A federally recognized Indian tribe, constituent band with headquarters in Minnesota

Institutions reported making the remains of more than 3,100 Native Americans available for return to the White Earth Band of Minnesota Chippewa Tribe.

The band was also eligible to claim more than 12,700 associated funerary objects.

Institutions continue to hold the remains of at least 3,000 Native Americans taken from counties known to be of interest to the band.*

Where Native American remains made available for return to the White Earth Band of Minnesota Chippewa 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 band

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

Institution that made remains available for return

Note: Remains of two Native Americans with no location information were made available for return to the White Earth Band of Minnesota Chippewa 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 37 institutions made Native American remains available for return to the White Earth Band of Minnesota Chippewa Tribe.

Institution	Remains Made Available for Return To Band
Minnesota Indian Affairs Council	1,380
University of Michigan Museum of Anthropology	628
Michigan State University	196
Wisconsin Historical Society	193
Grand Valley State University	113
Beloit College, Logan Museum of Anthropology	108
Harvard University	98
University of Iowa, Office of the State Archaeologist	60
University of Wisconsin, Milwaukee, Department of Anthropology	58
University of Wisconsin, Madison, Department of Anthropology	52
Marshall University	38
Bess Bower Dunn Museum	34
Historical Society of Saginaw County, Inc.	20
Milwaukee Public Museum	15
Michigan State Historic Preservation Office	14
University of Wisconsin, Oshkosh	13
Princeton University	12
Sloan Museum	9
Michigan History Center	8
Michigan State Police	8
Museum of Ojibwa Culture and Marquette Mission Park - City of St. Ignace	8
Toledo Zoological Society	8
Coe College	7
American Museum of Natural History	5
Michigan Department of Transportation	4
Denver Museum of Nature and Science	2
Detroit Institute of Arts	2
MetroParks of the Toledo Area	2
University of Pennsylvania Museum of Archaeology and Anthropology	2
Berrien County Sheriff's Office	1
City of Traverse City	1
Illinois State Museum	1
Indiana State Museum and Historic Sites Corporation, State of Indiana	1
Minnesota Historical Society	1
Rhinelander High School	1
Sheboygan County Historical Museum	1
U.S. Department of the Interior	1

Timeline of Native American remains made available for return to the White Earth Band of Minnesota Chippewa 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 3,000 Native Americans that were taken from counties known to be of interest to the White Earth Band of Minnesota Chippewa Tribe.

These are estimates calculated using remains not made available for return from counties that the band has previously been eligible to claim remains from, as well as counties that the band has indicated interest in to the federal government. They are not comprehensive figures. The band 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 Band
Milwaukee Public Museum	1,215
Univ. of Michigan	562
Illinois State Museum	173
Univ. of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign	135
Univ. of Wisconsin, Oshkosh	133
Wisconsin Historical Society	126 Museum Division (88) Historic Preservation Division (38)
West Virginia Division of Culture and History	104
Harvard Univ.	93
Ohio History Connection	64
Indiana Univ.	58 Dept. of Anthropology (52) Glenn A. Black Lab. of Archeology (6)
Oshkosh Public Museum	55
Center for American Archeology, Kampsville Archeological Center	45
Virginia Dept. of Historic Resources	43
Univ. of Minnesota, Duluth	38
Grand Rapids Public Museum	33
Minnesota Indian Affairs Council	32
Neville Public Museum	26
Lawrence Univ.	22
Dept. of the Interior	18 Sherburne National Wildlife Refuge (15) Voyageurs NP (3)
Univ. of Toledo	15
Michigan State Historic Preservation Office	14
Wayne State Univ.	14
Cranbrook Institute of Science	11
Ball State Univ.	6
Field Museum	5
Kenosha Public Museum	5
Univ. of Pennsylvania	4
Elgin Public Museum	3
Dept. of Defense	3
Univ. of Wisconsin, Milwaukee	3
Alma College	2
Brigham Young Univ.	2
Minnesota Historical Society	2
Washington County Historical Society	2
American Museum of Natural History	1
Carnegie Museum of Natural History	1
Louisiana State Exhibit Museum	1
Mutter Museum, College of Physicians of Philadelphia	1
Putnam Museum	1
Rochester Museum and Science Center	1
Springfield Science Museum	1
Univ. of Akron	1
Univ. of Iowa	1
Univ. of Nebraska State Museum	1
Univ. of Notre Dame	1
Univ. of Tennessee, Knoxville	1

Counties of interest used in estimate include: Cass in Iowa. Hancock, Jo Daviess, Kane, La Salle, Lake, Mchenry and Winnebago in Illinois. Delaware, Dubois and La Porte in Indiana. Alcona, Allegan, Alpena, Antrim, Arenac, Baraga, Barry, Bay, Berrien, Branch, Calhoun, Cass, Charlevoix, Cheboygan, Chippewa, Clinton, Delta, Dickinson, Emmet, Genesee, Gladwin, Gogebic, Grand Traverse, Gratiot, Hillsdale, Houghton, Huron, Ingham, Ionia, Iosco, Iron, Isabella, Jackson, Kalamazoo, Kent, Keweenaw, Lake, Lapeer, Leelanau, Lenawee, Livingston, Mackinac, Macomb, Marquette, Mecosta, Menominee, Midland, Missaukee, Monroe, Montcalm, Montmorency, Muskegon, Newaygo, Oakland, Oceana, Ogemaw, Ontonagon, Otsego, Ottawa, Roscommon, Saginaw, Sanilac, Shiawassee, St. Clair, Tuscola, Van Buren, Washtenaw, Wayne and Wexford in Michigan. Aitkin, Anoka, Becker, Beltrami, Benton, Big Stone, Blue Earth, Brown, Carlton, Carver, Cass, Chippewa, Chisago, Clay, Clearwater, Crow Wing, Dakota, Douglas, Freeborn, Hennepin, Hubbard, Isanti, Itasca, Kanabec, Kandiyohi, Kittson, Koochiching, Lake, Lincoln, Mahnomen, Marshall, Meeker, Mille Lacs, Morrison, Murray, Nicollet, Norman, Otter Tail, Pine, Polk, Pope, Ramsey, Red Lake, Sherburne, St. Louis, Stearns, Todd, Traverse, Wabasha, Wadena, Washington, Watonwan, Wilkin, Winona, Wright and Yellow Medicine in Minnesota. Lucas and Madison in Ohio. Tazewell in Virginia. Ashland, Barron, Bayfield, Brown, Burnett, Chippewa, Clark, Crawford, Dodge, Door, Douglas, Dunn, Eau Claire, Florence, Fond Du Lac, Forest, Grant, Green Lake, Iowa, Iron, Jefferson, Kenosha, Langlade, Lincoln, Marathon, Marinette, Menominee, Milwaukee, Oconto, Oneida, Pierce, Polk, Portage, Price, Racine, Richland, Rock, Rusk, Sawyer, Shawano, Sheboygan, St. Croix, Taylor, Vilas, Walworth, Washburn, Washington, Waukesha, Winnebago and Wood 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 White Earth Band of Minnesota Chippewa 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.

More from The Repatriation Project

America’s Biggest Museums Fail to Return Native American Human Remains

The Museum Built on Native American Burial Mounds

Behind ProPublica’s Reporting on Repatriation

Get in touch

Know how an institution is handling repatriation? Have a personal story to share? We'd like to hear from you.

Learn how to report on repatriation

Watch an informational webinar with our reporters.

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.