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Following a landmark ProPublica investigation that found American museums and universities have failed to return thousands of remains of Native Americans, public radio station KUER looked at why one museum in Utah has only made 14 percent of the reported remains in its collection available for repatriation to tribes.
When the Native American Graves Protection and Repatriation Act passed in 1990, it was estimated that it would take institutions 10 years to return objects and remains to Indigenous nations. But 33 years later, less than half of the remains in the U.S. have been made available to tribes. In Utah, just a quarter of remains are available for burial. The largest holder of Indigenous remains, the Natural History Museum of Utah, has made just 14 percent of the remains in its collection available for repatriation.
Alexandra Greenwald, the museum's curator of ethnography, acknowledges that anthropologists and archaeologists have to repair “a damaging legacy of historic and unethical behavior in our field.” The Natural History Museum says many of the remains in its collection are Fremont Indians, a people culturally unaffiliated with Utah's current tribes. An update to NAGPRA now allows repatriation based on geographic affiliation as well as cultural connections.
Betsy Chappoose of the Ute Indian Tribe of the Uintah and Ouray Reservation told KUER it's important that all of the people and objects in museum collections are returned.
“Why would it be important if somebody found your grandmother to be returned to your family? It’s no different,” Chapoose said. “These are people. They’re not archeological relics.”
At the current pace, repatriation will take another 70 years to complete across the United States.
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