Native Americans fight to bring 128,000 ancestors home from US museums, universities

Ray Halbritter, representative for the Oneida Indian Nation of New York, has to travel over 200 miles to visit one of his ancestors, who is held deep in the collections of the American Museum of Natural History in New York.

The building conjures memories of school field trips and blockbuster films like "Night at the Museum" for many, but for folks like Halbritter, the institution stands for something darker: injustice against Native Americans.

"For institutions, they're remains," Halbritter told ABC News. "For our people, it's our grandmothers and grandfathers. It's people who we descended from.

One Oneida ancestor's remains were stolen from the Oneida Indian Nation's lands outside Syracuse, New York, in 1898, according to a repatriation notice in the federal register, and sold to a collector who later gifted them to the museum, where they have been sitting in archives for more than 100 years.

With the help of new federal guidelines, Halbritter said his ancestor is finally coming home.

"Coming here and being closer to this person who used to be alive… is a bit of an emotional feeling, but a good feeling, because they're coming home," Halbritter told ABC News.

Across the country, Native American tribes are struggling to reclaim what was stolen from them over centuries: the remains of their ancestors and personal sacred items, now held in museums, universities and other institutions that are often far from home.

Despite federal legislation passed nearly 35 years ago aimed at correcting this cultural appropriation and theft, an ABC News investigation found progress has been slow.

Under the Native American Graves and Repatriation Act (NAGPRA), which US President George H. W. Bush signed into law in 1990, any 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.

Nationwide, more than 128,000 Native American ancestors and 4.5 million sacred objects have been identified in collections across museums, universities and government agencies, according to National Parks Service data.

Those numbers don't include more than an estimated 90,000 ancestors and 700,000 associated funerary objects that have not yet been identified in collections.

"I'm pretty sure my ancestors from long ago did not bury their relatives thinking this was going to be the outcome," said Stacy Laravie, a member of the Ponca Tribe of Nebraska.

Laravie is the indigenization director for the National Association of Tribal Historic Preservation Officers (NATHPO), a nonprofit organization devoted to preserving indigenous cultures and identities throughout the U.S.

She stressed that NAGPRA and the return of ancestors and sacred items is, above all, a civil rights issue.

"These are not just material things that are sitting somewhere in a museum," she said. "There's still that dehumanization, and we have to explain why this is important."

Under the process called "repatriation," 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.

"Anyone can imagine how they would feel if their relatives were being held in an institution, their bones were being pulverized to do radio-carbon testing," Halbritter said. "What NAGPRA envisioned is to return these people."

However, critics of the law claim it was passed without any real guidelines for how consultations between tribes and institutions should happen, and what a reasonable timeline for return looked like.

"We have no idea what they hold in their archives," Kandice Watson, the Oneida Indian Nation's lead archivist, told ABC News. "There's no way that we could start the process. So, we really do have to rely on these universities and their morals and ethics to return these items to their rightful owners."

"We have a new generation of people who are growing up, just finding out this stuff happened. They're horrified," Watson said. "When you're young, a hundred years seems like a long time. But when you get older, you realize that's not that long."

Institutions like the American Muesum of Natural History, the Field Museum in Chicago, the Houston Museum of Natural Science and the Fowler Museum in Los Angeles -- all surveyed by ABC Owned Stations -- came into their collections in a variety of ways. Some were purchased, some were donated and some were transferred from other institutions over the years. But all of these collections have one thing in common: they represent a violent history of colonization, replacement and theft.

"As Western expansion progressed over the United States in the 1700 and 1800s, native peoples were forced to relocate to reservations, and so that meant we had to leave the bodies of our relatives in their graves at home," Shannon O'Loughlin, the executive director of the Association on American Indian Affairs, told ABC News. "We had to leave many of the cultural heritage and ceremonial items that were part of our belief systems, our life ways and our identity that we built over time"

O'Loughlin has been helping tribes handle legal cases over NAGPRA for more than 20 years.

"We also at the same time saw a rise in archaeology and anthropology in the study of those peoples and their skeletons, as well as the rise of museology and the exhibition of those same things," O'Loughlin said.

"Many of these items were just simply stolen. They were just plundered and sold," Ray Halbritter told ABC News. "Our limited resources, other incentives people have for profit or for academic ambitions, caused these items to be taken without our knowledge or approval. And now there's a good opportunity however to right the wrong."

Halbritter noted that, in recent years, institutions have been working harder to return his ancestors and others. Some of that, he said, was due in part to new regulations that went into effect in January 2024.

Under the new guidelines, institutions that fall under NAGPRA cannot display Native American, Native Alaskan or Native Hawaiian ancestors or sacred items without permission of descendants, tribes or Native Hawaiian organizations. Institutions also now have 90-day deadlines to respond to repatriation requests and a 5-year deadline to publish updated inventories.

June Carpenter, the NAGPRA director for the Field Museum in Chicago and a member of the Osage Nation, credited these updates with expediting her work. Before she took on this role at the Field Museum, she said she worked with her tribe to bring ancestors and sacred objects home.

"The new regulations do establish more ways to establish that cultural affiliation," Carpenter said. "There is another provision that allows if absolutely no determinations can be made, there is still an avenue for return."

In compliance with those new requirements, many exhibits in the Field Museum's Ancient Americas Hall, which encompasses the history of central and North America, including the Northwest Coast and Arctic, are now covered with murals, black boards and butcher paper.

In some exhibits, entire sections have been removed. Carpenter said she and her staff are working with Native communities to consult about the sacred objects that were on display only a year ago.

"We may have covered more than we needed, but we need to engage in consultation with the potentially affiliated tribes before we can display those items," she said.

Carpenter hopes that someday she will "work herself out of a job." She said every time tribal members come into the Field Museum to visit with their ancestors and sacred objects, she feels a sense of accomplishment.

"I think seeing your items in the museum collections, it's difficult. It's really difficult," Carpenter said. "But at the same time, you know, it can be fulfilling in a way to be reconnected with those items."

Similarly, what was once the Eastern Woodlands and Great Plains Halls at the American Museum of Natural History is now walled off and converted into a winding hallway with an exhibit offering information about NAGPRA, reckoning with the museum's unethical acquisition practices from years past.

The American Museum of Natural History told ABC News that Ray Halbritter's ancestor will be returned to Oneida in the coming weeks. ABC News Owned stations confirmed museums in their cities say they are taking similar paths towards repatriation with multiple native tribes.

"It's a good thing that we're making the right decisions about how these items are going to be treated and returned properly," Halbritter said. "There is going to be, working with Native Americans to help present the information in a way that's respectful, informative. So while it might seem sudden, these walls, it really is a long time coming."

Halbritter noted that, in recent years, institutions across the country have returned 90 of his ancestors home to Oneida lands, where they've finally been put to rest.

"This is just what we're supposed to do, we're supposed to take care of our ancestors, our past, our present and our future," Halbritter said.

He added that the work he does is for future generations.

"Everything we do is for our children's benefit, that they see a better world where they're respected, their ancestors are respected and treated with appropriate ceremony and respect they deserve," he said.

ABC7 Chicago's Chuck Goudie contributed to reporting.