Native Americans demand accountability for ancestral remains

Dartmouth College is the latest to announce it has identified the partial skeletal remains of 15 Native Americans housed in its anthropology department. It’s sparking a larger conversation between the college and Native American students and alumni about why the remains were mislabeled for so long and how the college acquired them.

In August of last year the University of North Dakota announced that it had found remains of “dozens” of ancestral Native Americans, as well as sacred objects, on campus. Just this month UND hired a compliance liaison officer to assist with ongoing repatriation efforts.

The Native American Graves Protection and Repatriation Act requires federally funded institutions including universities to return remains and cultural items to the tribes they were taken from.

An Associates Press review found some 870,000 Native American artifacts — including nearly 110,000 human remains — that should be returned to tribes under federal law are still in the possession of colleges, museums and other institutions across the country.