About

For our final project, we decided to focus on Native American artifacts in public institutions, with an emphasis on UC Berkeley. We understood that after the Native American Grave Protection Act (NAGPRA) was passed in 1990, museums and educational institutions nationwide were mandated to put more of a priority on repatriating culturally significant Native American items and remains, including UC Berkeley. However, the repatriation process sparked by NAGPRA has not been duly enforced, leading to the updated NAGPRA regulation passed December of 2023 which articulated that all unrepatriated remains and artifacts must not be put on public display without explicit permission from the tribe they belong to. Berkeley has an (underfunded) team of five NAGPRA representatives to lead the repatriation process of the 9,000+ Native remains/artifacts stored under the Hearst Gym. Thus, we have produced a collection of news articles, interviews, and pictures relating to public education institutions repatriating their extensive collections. We have created four unique collections each highlighting a different aspect of repatriation. The legality of publicly displaying Native remains, photographs of artifacts on display, and historical context for Berkeley's historical relationship with Natives within the story of Ishi and Kroeber.