Museums and universities all over the US hold human remains as well as artifacts of Native Americans in their exhibits. Now this is about to change. Reporting from nearly 50 local newsrooms, based on ProPublica’s “Repatriation Project,” has led to a wave of apologies and commitment to returning ancestral remains.
But promises are one thing and fulfilling them is quite another. Until this year, the University of Kentucky’s William S. Webb Museum of Anthropology had never returned any of the more than 4,500 Native American human remains in its collections.
However, in the wake of the ProPublica publication on the “Repatriation Project,” the university told federal officials that 138 ancestral remains in its collection could be repatriated to three Shawnee tribes in Oklahoma and Missouri. The university also announced it will commit nearly $900,000…
