UC Berkeley intends to repatriate 51 lots of cultural items to the Morongo Band of Mission Indians in accordance with federal law.
The cultural items, which are currently held at the Phoebe A. Hearst Museum of Anthropology, may be returned starting Jan. 20.
The Native American Graves Protection and Repatriation Act, or NAGPRA, requires museums and universities to take detailed inventories of human remains, funerary objections, sacred objects and objects of cultural patrimony that are claimed by a tribe and meet the requirements outlined in the law, according to an email from campus spokesperson Dan Mogulof.
The campus NAGPRA Implementation Committee, composed of three campus members and three tribal community members, decides what “ancestors and belongings are to be repatriated by law,” according to Mogulof. This includes processing requests for repatriation, which may be made by “lineal descendants, Indian tribes, and Native Hawaiian organizations.” For the past three years, the committee has not denied a claim.
The items requested for repatriation to the Morongo tribes fall under the category of objects of cultural patrimony. According to the Federal Register, these objects include bows, arrows, seed beaters, carrying nets and more.They were either acquired from the Morongo Reservation with the financial sponsorship of Phoebe A. Hearst or donated to the Hearst Museum of Anthropology.
The Morongo Band of Mission Indians is a federally recognized tribe in California, meaning it is eligible under NAGPRA to request objects for repatriation. Morongo Tribal Chairman Charles Martin stated in an email that multiple repatriation requests were made by the tribe in 2025 and consultation is still ongoing with campus’s NAGPRA program.
“While the Tribe has had prior contact with UC Berkeley, the working relationship with the UC Berkeley NAGPRA program was reestablished this past year, resulting in over three consultation visits to the UC Berkeley campus in 2025,” Martin said in an email.
According to Mogulof, campus previously required an unreasonable amount of “scientific proof” that often prevented tribal remains or belongings from being affiliated with a Tribe for repatriation purposes.
Tony Platt, a Distinguished Affiliated Scholar at campus’s Center for the Study of Law and Society and a lecturer at the UC Berkeley School of Law, said campus was the central university in the UC system that engaged in the practice of excavating native grave sites and “plundering” artifacts.
“Once the legislation was passed at the national level, they became much more silent about it,” Platt said. “I think there’s a certain degree of acknowledging shame about what happened, but not wanting to come to terms with that or reckon with it.”
According to Platt, an initial estimate indicated that it would take five years for institutions to comply with NAGPRA; it has now been 36 years, and the UC system has still not fully complied, Platt said. While Mogulof said in an email that campus has made various changes to policies aimed at expediting the repatriation process, Platt alleged it has become preoccupied with other issues and only complied with the “most narrow” definition of obligation.
He added that the language in the Federal Register notice regarding repatriation to the Morongo Reservation fails to acknowledge that the overwhelming majority of artifacts were acquired illegally or unethically through forced sales.
Platt said that campus must be transparent about its actions regarding repatriation, and assure ongoing involvement of tribal representatives and Native American organizations in discussions and debates about how to move forward.
“Repatriation is a legal and moral obligation, not a discretionary act,” Martin said in the email. “After more than 30 years, Morongo calls on UC Berkeley to make meaningful strides in complying with repatriation laws and in recognizing that tribes, not institutions, are the rightful stewards of their cultural heritage.”