A Mapping Project
Exploring Ancestral connections and NAGPRA inventories across the United States.
Project Overview
This project maps Native American Graves Protection and Repatriation Act (NAGPRA) inventories and cultural affiliations documented by institutions across Turtle Island (North America). It visualizes the disembodiment of Ancestors and cultural items from their landscapes, drawing specifically on the relationships between Tribal Nations and the museums, universities, federal agencies, and historical societies that hold Ancestral remains and cultural items.
The map makes visible a process that is often buried in bureaucratic databases and federal registers. By placing these relationships in geographic space, it asks: how far removed are Ancestors, which institutions hold these "collections," and who is taking action to return them.
This map holds a firm positionality and ethics in the very act of mapping — please reference the modal pop-up where this is acknowledged. There are three elements when reading the map:
1. The federally recognized tribal mark (red dot) indicates the locations of federally recognized tribes across each state.
2. The institutional mark (brown and green) indicates the locations of institutions that have completed NAGPRA inventories and published them in the Federal Register — including universities, museums, and state and federal government agencies. A split/shared collection mark (teal) indicates published inventories in which collections have been divided between institutions or across states.
3. The affiliation arc visualizes the geographic distance between where an individual was affiliated and the institution to which they were taken.
The data collected for this project spans inventories published between 2020 and 2026, covering three states — Michigan, Wisconsin, and Minnesota — with the intention to expand to additional Tribal Nations, states, and years.
A Note on the Data
All inventory and affiliation data is drawn from publicly available NAGPRA notices published in the Federal Register, as well as the National NAGPRA Online Databases maintained by the National Park Service. Institutional and Tribal Nation locations reflect documented addresses and traditional homelands, respectively.
Key Concepts
NAGPRA
The Native American Graves Protection and Repatriation Act (1990) is a federal law requiring institutions that receive federal funding to inventory Native American human remains, funerary objects, sacred objects, and objects of cultural patrimony — and to repatriate them to lineal descendants and culturally affiliated tribes.
Native American Graves Protection and Repatriation Act, 25 U.S.C. §§ 3001–3013 (1990)
Cultural Affiliation
Under NAGPRA, cultural affiliation is defined as a relationship of shared group identity that can be reasonably traced between a present-day tribe and an identifiable earlier group. Establishing affiliation draws on archaeological, geographical, kinship, biological, linguistic, folkloric, oral tradition, historical, and other relevant evidence.
25 U.S.C. § 3001(2); 43 C.F.R. § 10.14
Repatriation
Repatriation refers to the process by which institutions transfer Ancestral remains and cultural items back to culturally affiliated Tribes or lineal descendants. Repatriation can be thought of in two parts, the main portion is the direct transfer of ownership and control and sometimes can be partnered with the physical return.
National Park Service, National NAGPRA Program