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During an annual update to the University of Minnesota Board of Regents, senior advisor to the president on Native American affairs Karen Diver said the repatriation of the Mimbres collection could begin in October. 

“We anticipate working with the Hopi as the lead tribe to repatriate their ancestors and funerary objects in the fall,” said Diver. 

Anthropologists at the university excavated more than 150 ancestral remains and thousands of Mimbres cultural items from the ancestral gravesites of Indigenous people in the southwest during digs that took place between 1928 and 1931.  

The Hopi Tribe is located in northeastern Arizona.

“They have been sending representatives here, giving us guidance on how to care for their ancestors and funerary objects,” Diver said.

Minnesota museums adapt to new federal rules regarding Native objects and remains

The update from Diver marks another phase in a process that has taken place over the past three years as the university stepped up repatriation efforts.

The university’s regents passed a resolution authorizing the collection’s return in February 2022. 

“It is the moral and ethical calling of our land grant university that inspires and guides us, demanding that we act justly by repatriating that which was never ours,” wrote former Board of Regents chair Ken Powell in 2022.

The return of the Mimbres collection complies with requirements of the Native American Graves Protection and Repatriation Act — the 1990 law passed by Congress, which requires institutions that receive federal funds to return human remains and items of cultural patrimony to tribal nations and Native Hawaiian organizations. 

Diver said the Weisman Art Museum at the university has worked to build the necessary relationships with tribal nations to care for the collection as the repatriation process moves forward. 

“The bottom line on this is that the tribes are happy with the way the process is going and the regard and concern that they've been given,” she said. 

Melissa Olson

Author

The University of Minnesota is set to return human remains and funerary objects excavated from burial sites in the southwestern United States by anthropologists almost a century ago.

A woman gestures with her hands as she speaks

U of M plans to return funerary items and ancestral remains this fall

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