The College Fix

Tribe leaders say human remains, artifacts are ‘in boxes in the museum’s basement’

Members of a small Native American tribe demanded the University of California Berkeley return artifacts and human remains of their ancestors during a protest Tuesday outside the campus anthropology museum.

The Muwekma Ohlone Tribe’s protest was part of a larger demonstration seeking federal recognition status for the tribe. It’s a barrier that members say has kept them from obtaining the artifacts from the university, The Mercury News reports.

Tribe leader Joey Iyolopixtli Torres said members stopped at UC Berkeley as part of their cross-country “Trail of Truth” campaign.

There, Torres said the group prayed to their ancestors who are still being “held captive” by the university’s Hearst Museum of Anthropology, according to the report.

Tribal leaders told the newspaper the university still has tens of thousands of sacred artifacts and remains of their ancestors “in boxes in the museum’s basement.”

State and federal laws require public higher education institutions and museums to return Native American human remains and cultural items to tribes.

But because the Muwekma Ohlone Tribe is not federally recognized, its members said they are still seeking the return of their artifacts, the report states:

However, institutional barriers still stand in the way of Muwekma Ohlone people realizing this goal, according to Tribal Chairwoman Charlene Nijmeh.

Nijmeh (pronounced “nij-may”) said her people are descendants of the Verona Band of Alameda County, which was federally recognized in the early 1900s, but had their recognition terminated in 1927.

UC Berkeley played a key role in this history, as the university’s first anthropology professor, Alfred L. Kroeber, encouraged excavations of Native American burial sites, and later declared the Muwekma Ohlone tribe extinct — which directly led to its losing federal recognition and land rights.

Even after the passage of the federal act in 1990, the campus was known to routinely deny requests to return remains, but it overhauled its compliance efforts starting in 2018, a spokesperson said — adding that Cal has not denied any repatriation claim in the past five years, and has overturned previous denials.

The tribe has about 600 members, according to the report.

A University of California database of Native American artifacts shows UC Berkeley has 4,850 human remains that are “not yet repatriated,” as well as nearly 25,000 “funerary objects.”

Over the summer, California State University and University of California systems advertised several new staff positions specifically dedicated to “tribal relations” and compliance with the “repatriation” law, The College Fix reported.

However, repatriation efforts have received pushback from some historians who say doing so will hinder historical and archeological research.

MORE: California universities are hiring staff to give back Native American artifacts

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