Gaps in federal law cause delays in return of ancestral remains to California tribes

LOS ANGELES (KABC) -- Kimberly Morales-Johnson first attended a reburial of her ancestor's remains when she was a child. She remembers her family telling her the significance of the occasion.

"I remember being scared because it was basically human remains everywhere, and they shared with me that those are our aunties and our uncles and our grandparents," Morales-Johnson said. "And as their family members, it's our responsibility to take care of them."

Morales-Johnson is the tribal secretary for the San Gabriel Band of Mission Indians, a tribe with origins tracing back to Los Angeles and Orange Counties. The ancestors of living tribe members were excavated and stolen from their resting places over the course of more than a century to be used in archaeological research, to display in museums and to make room for private homes and parking lots, according to federal documents.

The theft of Native American ancestral remains is not unique to any one tribe or tribal nation. An ABC7 data team analysis of federal data shows more than 128,000 Native American ancestral remains have been identified at institutions nationwide. To search all U.S. institutions with collections, click here.

In 1990, Congress passed the Native American Graves and Repatriation Act, or NAGPRA, to try to right these past wrongs. The law required any U.S. institution that receives federal funding to identify and return any Native American, Native Alaskan or Native Hawaiian ancestral remains through a process called repatriation.

But the law, passed almost 35 years ago, has several gaps that have slowed the repatriation process for decades and kept tribes from receiving their ancestors.

Repatriation without recognition

Non-federally recognized tribes face a unique challenge, because they are not subject to NAGPRA. Instead, they must partner with tribes that have federal recognition to repatriate their ancestors.

"We would have to contact the surrounding Saboba, San Manuel or the Chumash (Indians) to say we have an ancestor, and we need to have a reburial," said Morales-Johnson, whose San Gabriel tribe is not federally recognized.

The San Gabriel Band of Mission Indians is one of at least 65 non-federally recognized tribes in California that are in touch with the state's Native American Heritage Commission. There is no official number for unrecognized tribes in the state, but Morales-Johnson estimates it is much higher than 65.

There are 109 tribes in California with federal recognition.

The state passed its own law, CalNAGPRA, in 2001 that is meant to fill gaps in federal repatriation law. However, even with updates to the law over the past few years, experts say that it doesn't resolve the issues facing non-federally recognized tribes.

Return of ancestors continues for LA County museums

Among the institutions still working to return ancestors is the Natural History Museums of LA County. Federal records and data supplied by the museum show it has repatriated about 26 percent of ancestral remains, while it still has about 380 in its possession.

"Moving forward, we'd like to increase the pace at which we can actually get to repatriation," said Amy Gusick, curator of anthropology and NAGPRA officer at the museum. "But that is complex."

Updates to NAGPRA that went into effect in January require museums to defer to tribal knowledge when identifying ancestral remains and working through repatriation.

The county natural history museum said in an email that it is working with tribes through the required consultation process in order to identify and return the ancestors it is still housing. Plus, in some cases, the museum is holding onto ancestors at the request of tribes searching for land to reinter them -- an especially thorny problem for non-federally recognized tribes that don't have territory.

Gusick said new grant funding will help support consultation with Southern California tribes for the review of the museums' anthropology and ethnology collections. She said the museum's goal is "to make sure that we are listening to the tribe so they can make the decisions about what is and is not subject to NAGPRA, what should be repatriated and what is okay to stay at the museum."

Morales-Johnson, who is also a basket weaver, points out that another reason why progress is slow is that the ancestors were removed and stored unethically, making it difficult to trace them back to their origins so many years after they were taken.

"Hopefully they put notes in there, but not always," she said. "And then they just stored them because they felt that they had the right to store them."

The repatriation process isn't just for ancestral remains. It also applies to native cultural artifacts and funerary objects. Institutions sometimes house double or triple the number of native objects than they do ancestral remains, so the process of returning them can be long and arduous.

Eyewitness News met with Morales-Johnson near the Tongva Village at the California Botanic Garden in Claremont. She stressed the return of the artifacts is also very important for tribes.

"The artifacts are what teach us now today, but they also hold that spirit of our people, of that survivor DNA, I guess," she said. "And so for me, it's very empowering to visit them."

As is the case for many, Morales-Johnson is volunteering her free time to help with repatriation.

"It's because it's the right thing to do," she said. "Because I have a responsibility and obligation, and it's not necessarily a transaction. This is something that you do because you're passionate and you feel a connection because it's part of your identity."

"Unfortunately for Native Americans, part of our identity was colonized and ripped away."