35 years later, California tribes still fighting to reclaim ancestral remains

SANTA YNEZ, Calif. (KABC) -- Across the country, Native American tribes are struggling to reclaim what was taken from them over the course of more than a century: the remains of their ancestors and personal sacred items, now held in museums, universities and other institutions that are, in many cases, far from home.

Nakia Zavalla, the historic preservation officer and cultural director for the Santa Ynez Band of Chumash Indians, told Eyewitness News about the relentless and heavy labor of repatriating her ancestors who were taken from their resting places.

"They were actually being taken by curators that represent local museums here within Santa Barbara County," she said. "And it was all done in the name of research or science to learn more about Chumash people."

The theft of Native American ancestors' 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.

Across the U.S., thousands of Zavalla's ancestors have been kept in institutions as far away as the American Museum of Natural History of New York, the Field Museum in Chicago and Harvard University in Massachusetts. Some are even being held outside of the country.

"We didn't have rights in 1920 to protect" against it, Zavalla said. "They were allowed to come through and take from the graves."

In an attempt to correct these past wrongs, President George H. W. Bush in 1990 signed the Native American Graves and Repatriation Act.

Under NAGPRA, any U.S. institution that receives federal funding must identify any Native American, Native Alaskan, or Native Hawaiian ancestral remains, funerary objects (something placed with individual human remains usually at the time of burial), sacred objects, and objects of cultural patrimony in their possession.

Federally recognized tribes can make a claim that those people and objects belonged to their ancestors, and therefore should be returned to tribal lands for proper reinterment and care through a process called repatriation.

But ABC7 found that 35 years later, Southern California tribes are still trying to reclaim the ancestors that were taken from them.

"We have some interesting stories of curators throwing fits, slamming their hands on tables, not happy with what we're doing, and advocating against NAGPRA," Zavalla said.

The ABC7 data team's analysis shows that institutions have yet to identify more than 90,000 ancestors in their possession, and so they have not yet been returned to tribes.
California has the third-most unidentified ancestral remains of any state: more than 7,000.

The Santa Ynez Band of Chumash Indians has worked with more than 80 museums on the return of more than 2,000 ancestors and hundreds of thousands of funerary objects. The tribe estimates there are thousands of ancestors who still need to be returned.

Zavalla describes the repatriation of her ancestors and their belongings as a responsibility and honor.

"It is very heavy work. I mean, we are picking up babies. We're picking up our ancestors that have been displaced for so long, and it's heavy, and we need to, you know, sorry...."

Zavalla took a moment to collect herself.

"I think with returning, picking up the ancestors, it's hard to understand why this was done in the first place," she said. "Desecration of our burial sites in taking their belongings has been really hard to understand."

More than 16,000 native ancestors have been held at UC schools

The Santa Ynez Band of Chumash Indians underwent a two-year process with UCLA to repatriate more than 1,700 ancestral remains in 2016.
Federal documents show the university excavated them along the California coast during archeological missions and did so in some cases to make room for private homes and freeways. Some of the ancestors lived as far back as 3000 B.C.

Zavalla said the repatriation process was "smooth and well planned," and UCLA provided funding to help complete it.

UCLA has housed more than 2,000 ancestors, almost more than all the other institutions in the greater Los Angeles region combined, according to federal data.

Allison Fischer-Olson, repatriation coordinator and curator of Native American cultures at the Fowler Museum at UCLA, said some came into university labs to be used in research.

Others, she said, were taken during "UC or UCLA field school classes throughout the decades, where they did collect human remains and cultural items, which is a practice that we do not ethically partake in anymore."

The Fowler Museum took control of all Native American ancestral remains kept across UCLA's campuses in 1990, when NAGPRA was passed, to begin to inventory them.

Data from the UC system's website shows that UC schools have possessed more than 16,000 ancestral remains in all. As of May 31, more than 6,000 have yet to be returned.

UCLA has made significant progress on repatriation, returning more than 99% of ancestors to tribes. Meanwhile, four out of seven UC schools have returned less than 50% of ancestors in their collections.

Repatriation is an ongoing process, so the number of ancestors returned by each university could have increased since the data was last updated in May.

"I feel really grateful to be in the role I'm in within the museum and be able to really call out and speak to some of the unethical practices that museums and institutions like UCLA have engaged in previously," Fischer-Olson said.

"And actually have an avenue for starting to right those wrongs, and also to ensure that we are putting processes and practices in place to make sure that we do not do them again."

Tribes say NAGPRA updates that took effect in January 2024 have helped speed up repatriation by lagging institutions.

Those 2024 revisions enforce stricter rules over identification of remains, give institutions a deadline of five years to update and publish their inventories and require they defer to indigenous knowledge when it comes to repatriation and museum displays.

Institutions also now have 90-day deadlines to respond to repatriation requests.

Land remains a challenge to proper reburial of ancestors, especially for tribes that are not federally recognized and don't have reservations to call home. In one instance, UCLA tried to address this problem by providing UCLA-controlled land for a reburial.

"It's not a happy story," Fischer-Olson said. "It's a story that is really important and needs to be told, and we need to acknowledge the pain and harm that it's caused native communities. But I think through that, something beautiful can also come out of it, as we work together to accomplish our repatriations together."

For Zavalla, with the Santa Ynez Band of Chumash Indians, the significance of this repatriation work goes beyond this generation.

"We know our children are watching," she said. "These are modern-day stories that we will continue to tell about the journey of the ancestors coming home so they will resonate through our people and through generations."

You can find more coverage of repatriation efforts across the country on ABC News Live Prime with Linsey Davis on Hulu, Disney+ and abcnews.com.