LEXINGTON, Ky. — The University of Kentucky is one of the largest holders of Native American remains and artifacts that have not been made available for return to tribes, a report from ProPublica published this week showed.
The William S. Webb Museum of Anthropology, located at UK, holds more than 4,500 Native American remains. Under the Native American Graves Protection and Repatriation Act, or NAGPRA, federal agencies and institutions are required to return Native American remains and cultural items to tribes. The law was passed in 1990 by Congress, but most remains located at museums and universities across the country still have not been returned.
UK holds the sixth highest amount of Native American remains that have not yet been made available for return to tribes, according to ProPublica. Other institutions that also hold high numbers of unreturned remains include the University of California, Berkeley, the Illinois State Museum and Harvard University. Regionally, the University of Tennessee, Knoxville and the Tennessee Valley Authority also hold high numbers of unreturned remains and items.
Part of NAGPRA states that remains and objects do not have to be returned to tribes unless a tribe or organization makes a formal request for those items to be returned, which has allowed universities and institutions to keep the items, ProPublica reported. ProPublica is a nonprofit newsroom that produces investigative and accountability journalism.
The report from ProPublica, published Wednesday, showed that none of the items held by UK had been officially returned to tribes. UK spokesperson Whitney Siddiqi said Friday progress is being made toward repatriation.
UK holds 4,476 Native American ancestor remains and 7,757 funerary belongings, Siddiqi said. Of those, 610 ancestors and more than 5,600 funerary objects have been culturally affiliated and are in the process of being returned to tribes.
“Once complete, this one project will have repatriated about 15% of all Native ancestors held at the William S. Webb Museum,” Siddiqi said.
Native American remains came to UK through part of the New Deal’s public work projects nearly a century ago, when archaeological sites across the nations were excavated. However, those excavations took the remains and cultural items of Native Americans without consent of the tribes, and housed them at museums and institutions, including the Webb Museum.
Data from ProPublica come from the National Park Service, which tracks Native American remains and objects that have been reported under NAGPRA. The data are self-reported by institutions to the National Park Service, which tracks information about where remains and items were taken from, where they are currently held, and if they have been made available for return to tribes, according to ProPublica.
On Friday, UK announced it was investing nearly $900,000 to return remains to Native Americans in Kentucky, with the goal of returning all remains and cultural items held by the museum in a “transparent, respectful and legal manner following meaningful collaborative consultations with official Tribal representation,” UK said in a news release.
UK Arts and Sciences Dean Ana Franco-Watkins, who was hired last year, was familiar with repatriation under NAGPRA at her former institution, Auburn University. After Franco-Watkins was hired, she began working to address repatriation more substantively.
Siddiqi said the investment announced Friday had been considered as part of a “long-term plan to make progress on repatriation.”
“This significant step forward is a testament to the university’s steadfast commitment to Native nations,” Franco-Watkins said in a release from UK. “Much progress has been made over the past several years but there is more we can and must do to complete the sensitive process of repatriation with transparency, dignity and respect.”
UK said it has implemented several initiatives in recent years related to NAGPRA, including developing a digital database for ancestral remains and objects and sharing it with Native nations, forming a NAGPRA advisory group and building relationships with Native nations.
“We recognize the pain caused by past practices and continue to work closely with Native nations to return their ancestors and cultural items home in a transparent, respectful and ethical process,” UK’s NAGPRA Coordinator Celise Chilcote-Fricker said.
In 2019, 12 employees in the Department of Anthropology and Webb Museum were fired. After two archaeology units were dissolved, an external review of the department praised its work training professional archaeologists and creating outreach programs and activities, while also expressing concern about the lack of a NAGPRA compliance officer.
Chilcote-Fricker became the NAGPRA compliance officer in 2019.
Repatriation efforts are expected to take several years to complete because of the size of UK’s collection, the university said Friday.
“We are committed to repatriating all Native American ancestral remains and funerary belongings, sacred objects and objects of cultural patrimony to Native nations,” Chilcote-Fricker said. “This investment will help make that commitment a reality.”
