SACRAMENTO, CA – According to a recent assessment by the California State Auditor, “the University of California system’s efforts to repatriate and return Native Americans’ remains and cultural items” failed.
The Sacramento Bee notes that “despite progress over the past five years, the UC system still holds “thousands of individuals’ [remains] and hundreds of thousands of potential cultural items and will likely take more than a decade at its current pace to repatriate all of its collections,” the state audit reported.
The Bee reports, “Congress passed federal legislation in 1990 that allows federally recognized tribes to request the return of cultural items and human remains” where “California expanded on the Native American Graves Protection and Repatriation Act in 2001 to include tribes in the state that are not federally recognized.”
The Sacramento Bee notes how, while “the Office of the President doesn’t know the full extent of the remains and items on UC campuses, the report, the third of four audits required by state law, found that the Office of the President had not ‘effectively overseen the university’s compliance” with the federal repatriation act.’”
Another complaint noted “auditors found that universities had not properly cared for or stored potential cultural items” with “30 items that were stolen in 2022 from a UC Davis lecture hall.”
The Bee story also stated the “legislature appropriates funding specifically to prioritize returning tribal artifacts and human remains…the Office of the President (should) establish clear timelines and accountability measures to identify undiscovered remains or items on all UC campuses.”
UC President Dr. Michael Drake responded, “It is clear that more needs to be done to meet those obligations. To that end, the University will implement each recommendation within the draft audit report.”
