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Most California State University campuses with collections of Native American remains and cultural items have failed to return them to tribes, as required by law, according to a California state auditor report released last week. The report says the system hasn’t prioritized complying with the 1990 federal Native American Graves Protection and Repatriation Act and its 2001 California counterpart.
The auditor’s office surveyed all 23 campuses in the system and conducted site visits at four campuses, EdSource reported. More than half of the 21 CSU campuses with remains and ritual items didn’t have inventories of the extent of their collections, even though the law mandated that these items be cataloged by 1995, according to the report. The system as a whole has only returned about 6 percent of its collections to tribes. The two campuses that did repatriate some of their collections failed to follow the processes laid out by the law, according to the report.
CSU campuses “generally lack the policies, funding, and staffing necessary to follow the law and repatriate their collections,” California state auditor Grant Parks wrote in the report. Meanwhile, the “Chancellor’s Office has not provided the guidance and oversight necessary for campuses to comply … It has not issued a systemwide policy to provide guidance to campuses, nor has it ensured that campuses prioritize funding for their repatriation activity.”
