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Dakota people from several communities gathered at a repatriation site in the Red Wing area beginning Monday night to plan for the week’s events. They gathered at a quiet place atop a gently rolling terrace surrounded by trees on one side and farmland on the other. 

Earlier the same day, Prairie Island Indian Community cultural resource workers completed preparations for the return of ancestral remains, along with hundreds of funerary items. 

Taken from burial mounds in southeast Minnesota, the remains had been held by Minnesota institutions for many decades. 

Beginning Tuesday morning, the Prairie Island Indian Community held ceremonies to rebury the remains of 59 people and almost 500 sacred items. The ceremonies are a part of the tribe’s ongoing commitment to care for their ancestors and their burial mounds. 

Franky Jackson is the compliance officer for Prairie Island Indian Community. Jackson said he had started the work to bring home the remains in 2007 and that his office has prioritized the care of their relatives. He said there are many more still waiting to return home. 

“This is just the tip of the iceberg when it comes to our responsibility,” said Jackson. 

The ancestral remains that were returned Tuesday had been held in collections at the Science Museum of Minnesota and by the Minnesota Indian Affairs Council at a special repository at Hamline University. The remains cared for by MIAC at Hamline had come from collections at the University of Minnesota and the Minnesota Historical Society, among others. 

The remains and sacred items were returned by both institutions in compliance with the 1990 Native American Graves Protection and Repatriation Act, or NAGRPA, a law that requires federally funded institutions return American Indian remains and funerary items in their custody back to tribal nations.  

The Prairie Island Community’s tremendous love and respect for their ancestors required the cultural resource staff to build the relationships necessary to complete the process, according to Jackson. 

Jackson said the repatriation was a collaboration among the Bureau of Indian Affairs, the Minnesota Indian Affairs Council, the Science Museum, aided with research from MSU Mankato and neighboring Dakota communities. 

On the Tuesday morning drive to retrieve the remains, Prairie Island historic preservation officer Noah White was joined by researcher Ron Schirmer, a professor at MSU Mankato, and Jay Renville, Sisseton Wahpeton Dakota. Renville is also a member of the Kit Fox Society, a traditional group who helps lead repatriations 

“This process is long overdue,” White said. 

Prairie Island’s historic preservation office invited MPR News to observe the procession held Tuesday. 

On the ride to St. Paul, White, Renville and Schirmer shared stories about their experiences.

They recounted trips across the country over the past decade to repatriate ancestral remains. Shirmer recalled participating in as many as six repatriations. Renville remembered taking part in a recent trip to bring the remains of students from Carlisle Indian Industrial School back to South Dakota. He reflected on the differences between that experience and the one at present. 

“Each one of these repatriations is a little bit different,” Renville observed. 

While the drive to and from St. Paul was somber in tone, it was filled with a sense of purpose, and the mood in the van was largely positive.  

Some of the remains repatriated Tuesday were removed during archeological digs which took place several years after the federal law requiring the return of remains to tribal nations had been passed. 

“A lot of archeologists simply aren’t trained to know how to identify human remains. Students have to be properly trained,” Schirmer said. 

Schirmer trains archeology and anthropology students at MSU Mankato on how to identify human remains at archeological sites. He also teaches students how to work alongside tribal nations on repatriation projects. 

“When you are doing the right thing, you feel good about it,” the researcher said. 

There were also moments of levity during the trip Tuesday. The conversation turned to the results of Monday night’s football game. There were moments of good-natured humor sprinkled in — a way to care for fellow team members and honor those who were going home. 

“The relatives, they appreciate a little bit of humor too,” Renville said.  

Institutions who receive federal funding are required to publish inventories of American Indian remains in their custody. The process of returning remains to the Prairie Island Indian Community this week began in the 1990s when the Science Museum of Minnesota first published its inventories of human remains, according to Ed Fleming, a curator at the museum. 

In an email to MPR News, Fleming explained that the most recent inventory was published early September 2024. Prairie Island completed their part of the repatriation process with a letter to the Science Museum in January. 

Historically, institutions have denied the requests of tribal nations to return ancestral remains by claiming the remains were not “culturally affiliated” with a particular tribe. Recent updates to federal law closed those loopholes and strengthened tribal authority to make decisions regarding the return of their ancestors. 

“All of the relatives returned [Tuesday] had been designated as ‘culturally unaffiliated,’ and so had not been claimed,” Fleming wrote. “The new regulations removed ‘culturally unaffiliated’ as a category and allowed for traditional knowledge to be a significant basis for claims, streamlining the process.” 

Fleming added that it is the policy of the Science Museum to follow the leadership of tribal nations.  

“We aspire to hold a cultural collection that is 100 percent ethically stewarded, and that may require in some cases going ‘beyond NAGPRA,’” Fleming wrote. 

Almost two-thirds of the ancestral remains returned this week were in the care of the Minnesota Indian Affairs Council. The council represents 10 of the 11 tribal nations in the state and is written into the state’s burial laws. The group maintains a relationship with Hamline University to care for human remains at a special repository there. 

Jackson said starting in 2017 he insisted the council’s cultural resource staff complete the necessary work of inventorying the remains. 

“Every meeting we went to, we would not let them off the hook,” Jackson said.

After visiting the Science Museum and Hamline University, the caravan returned to the reburial site near Red Wing. The caravan was met by more than three dozen Dakota people waiting near the entrance to the site. The vehicle carrying the remains was carefully unloaded. 

After several minutes, a procession had formed by those carrying boxes containing the remains. They walked about a quarter of a mile, carrying their ancestors to the place where they would be reburied. 

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On Tuesday, the Prairie Island Indian Community brought home 59 ancestral remains and nearly 500 funerary items that were taken from burial mounds around southeast Minnesota.

Prairie Island Indian Community welcomes home ancestral remains

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