Returning Home: Bay Area Indigenous tribes fight for return of ancestors

SAN FRANCISCO (KGO) -- For decades, thousands of Native American ancestral remains have been stored away in museums and academic institutions across California, despite a federal law requiring their return to descendants.

ABC News teamed up with the ABC News Owned Television stations and our team of data journalists to look into why this process has taken so long.

The Native American Graves Protection and Repatriation Act (NAGPRA), passed by Congress in 1990, mandates that federally funded institutions repatriate remains and associated burial objects to their respective tribes. However, progress has been painfully slow, leaving Indigenous leaders frustrated and demanding action.

Among those leading the charge is Charlene Nijmeh, the chairwoman of the Muwekma Ohlone Tribe, who has been fighting for years to reclaim their ancestors from the storage rooms of institutions such as UC Berkeley. This is one of many reasons why the tribe is seeking federal recognition.

"A prayer to our ancestors who are being held captive at UC Berkeley's basement at the Phoebe Hearst Museum. We need to send a prayer to let them know that we are thinking of them, we are praying for them. And when we return, we are going to return with federal recognition to return them back home, back to the ground they came from," said Nijmeh as she led protests outside the museum in August 2024.

UC Berkeley alone holds more than 9,300 ancestral remains stored in boxes on campus. These remains ended up there largely due to California's expansion, which led to the destruction of grave sites and the collection of Indigenous remains and artifacts for research.

This situation is not distinct to the state. An ABC7 data team analysis of federal data shows more than 128,000 Native American ancestral remains and 4.5 million sacred objects have been identified at institutions nationwide. California has the third highest number of unidentified ancestral remains and the second highest number of associated funerary objects.

"That is our struggle: bringing them home. There are thousands of our dead ancestors in the basement-hundreds of thousands of burial objects that belonged with them," said Nijmeh.

Despite the clear legal requirements under NAGPRA, many universities and museums have been slow to comply. The Muwekma Ohlone Tribe, along with many others in California, has faced additional barriers due to its lack of recognition by the federal government. NAGPRA only applies to tribes recognized as sovereign political entities by the U.S. government, leaving many Indigenous communities unable to claim their ancestors.

Unlike many other states, California has an extraordinarily high number of Indigenous tribes, but only a fraction are federally recognized. Without that recognition, tribes like the Muwekma Ohlone have no legal standing to reclaim remains under NAGPRA.

To bring awareness to their struggle, members of the tribe have staged demonstrations from the Golden Gate Bridge to San Jose City Hall.

"Everyone in Indian Country knows that the federal recognition process is broken, it's corrupt and needs to be revised," said Nijmeh.

Cristina Azocar, Ph.D., a professor at San Francisco State University and an expert on federal recognition, explains the process.

"It's an arduous process, that's what I would say," said Azocar.

Her tribe, the Upper Mattaponi Indian Tribe based in Virginia, successfully gained recognition through Congress in 2018 after a struggle that started in 1974.

Azocar, the author of News Media and the Indigenous Fight for Federal Recognition, outlines the three ways a tribe can gain federal recognition: through an act of Congress, administrative recognition via the Bureau of Indian Affairs, or through a judicial ruling by suing the U.S. government.

"We've been fighting for 500 years, so we have a lot of resilience. But tribal leaders change, and so that is one thing that could make it hard. What's often most difficult is the finances involved. It can take millions of dollars for a tribe to go through the federal recognition process because of the amount of material and the cost to collect that material," said Azocar.

The financial burden alone - hiring archivists, historians, and legal teams - makes federal recognition unattainable for many tribes.

Tribal attorney Michelle Lee has represented California Indigenous tribes, like the Confederated Villages of Lisjan, for 25 years and has worked extensively on repatriation cases. Lee is a member of the Pit River Tribe and has witnessed firsthand the emotional toll on tribal members who attempt to retrieve their ancestors.

"It's hard to find the words to relate the pain that one would feel when they go into a sterile building, having to be clean and wear gloves, and there's your ancestors' human remains in containers, and there's nothing you can do about it," said Lee.

Under California law, public universities like UC and CSU campuses are required to have NAGPRA committees that hear claims from tribes for the return of their ancestors and items buried alongside them. Lee recently concluded a three-year tenure on UC Davis's NAGPRA committee.

The California State Auditor investigated the UCs in 2022 and the CSUs in 2023 in response to state lawmakers calling into question why the process was so delayed.

"The penalty of losing funding, that's really what's making things change," said Lee. "That's a pretty draconian remedy, but that's the only thing that created any results."

To see all U.S. institutions with collections, click here.

At UC Berkeley, Alexandra Lucas, the repatriation coordinator, acknowledges the vast number of remains still in storage.

"With UC Berkeley, specifically, we've got 4,850 people that we're still working with tribes through the federal process to affiliate. We have 4,440 people currently on the Federal Register, but with non-federally recognized tribes, so there'll need to be some pathway there," said Lucas.

The sheer volume of remains and cultural artifacts adds to the challenge. Berkeley alone has over 48,000 burial and cultural items in its possession. Some universities, like Sacramento State, hold upwards of a million.

Victor Aguilar, who oversees repatriation efforts at San Francisco State University, says a lack of resources is another challenge.

"I wish I could say it could happen overnight or within a year, like we can snap our fingers and get everything returned, but that's not the reality of it," said Aguilar.

SF State has roughly 29,500 items and 250 ancestors stored on campus.

Aguilar is the only full-time repatriation staff member at SF State, making it difficult to process claims efficiently.

"I'm only one voice, but being able to be that voice for this type of work is important because it shows people that we're actually doing it," said Aguilar.

While universities work to return remains, there's also the concern that additional burial sites could be disturbed by infrastructure projects like the expansion of a road.

Kathryn Rose, who leads the Cultural Resource Studies office at Caltrans District 4, says the Department of Transportation is more focused than ever on avoiding further disruptions when possible.

"If we think that there might be a site, but we don't have solid evidence, we'll go and do testing," said Rose.

Rather than sending newly discovered remains to repositories, Caltrans now works with tribes to find alternatives.

"Now our practice is that we work with the tribes. We're not creating new collections. We're going to either rebury or find a way to put it back where it won't be disturbed again," she added.

This provides some hope for tribes like the Muwekma Ohlone, ensuring their ancestors remain undisturbed.

This is progress, but Lee says more needs to be done to grant further protections to these burial sites.

"Caltrans is not going to redesign their road," she said. "State laws do not have teeth that limit a party, whether it's a state agency or private developer, from bulldozing a burial ground."

As the repatriation struggle continues, some tribes are exploring a creative, yet bittersweet, workaround: partnering with a federally recognized tribe that can claim the remains on their behalf.

While Lee tells us this provides a legal path forward, it also reinforces the systemic barriers that prevent tribes from exercising self-determination, which they have been denied for generations.

"When it comes to Native American issues you have to fight and stand up for what is right. We're not going to give up - we'll keep moving forward," said Nijmeh.

The battle for recognition, repatriation, and justice continues, but Indigenous leaders remain steadfast in their commitment to bringing their ancestors home.