UC Berkeley is working to return 36 lots of artifacts that are culturally, traditionally or historically linked to the Agua Caliente Band of Cahuilla Indians.\u00a0<\/p>\n
The repatriation of these artifacts will begin Aug. 7, and artifacts will be returned to the Agua Caliente tribe of the Agua Caliente Indian Reservation near Palm Springs.\u00a0<\/p>\n
According to a Federal Register notice published July 8, the cultural objects include \u201cworked stone, faunal remains, and ceramic fragments.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u201cThese items are far more than museum collections \u2014 they embody the history, traditions, and cultural identity of our people and deserve to be cared for by the descendants and community to whom they belong,\u201d said Jeff L. Grubbe, tribal chairman of the Agua Caliente Band of Cahuilla Indians, in a statement.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Repatriation takes place in accordance with the Native American Graves Protection and Repatriation Act, which requires institutions that receive federal funding to repatriate Native American cultural artifacts and remains.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Since January 2026, UC Berkeley has issued eight notices of repatriation or inventory completion in the Federal Register. In 2025 alone, campus issued 22 notices, according to UC Berkeley\u2019s NAGPRA website<\/a>. In 2024 and 2023, that number was much lower, sitting at nine and 12, respectively.\u00a0<\/p>\n Every other year of notices involving UC Berkeley recorded in the Federal Register saw at most 10 repatriation or completion notices.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n Institutions issue a notice of inventory completion in the Federal Register if they have identified a cultural affiliation of human remains and the relevant funerary objects. Notices of intended repatriation are issued if an institution has received a repatriation request for unassociated funerary objects or others of cultural significance.\u00a0<\/p>\n Campus spokesperson Dan Mogulof\u00a0said in an email that the increase in repatriations is largely due to campus\u2019s efforts to expand its NAGPRA staff \u2014 from one person to nine, with an additional seven positions still available \u2014 as well as \u201ccentralization of NAGPRA-related efforts\u201d in the chancellor\u2019s office and dedicated funding to support repatriation efforts.\u00a0<\/p>\n \u201cThe return of these cultural belongings represents an important step in honoring the intent of NAGPRA and recognizing the enduring connection between the Cahuilla people and our ancestral heritage,\u201d Grubbe said in the statement.\u00a0<\/p>\n Institutions such as museums, universities and local governments \u2014 in this case UC Berkeley and the Phoebe A. Hearst Museum of Anthropology on campus \u2014 must give notice of their intent to repatriate items so that anyone affiliated with a tribe can make additional requests. There may be more than one tribe with a connection to the artifacts in question.\u00a0<\/p>\n UC Berkeley\u2019s NAGPRA committee must then review all repatriation requests, and if certain artifacts have competing requests, it must determine the most appropriate requester.\u00a0<\/p>\n Mogulof said no repatriation requests have been denied since the committee was formed in 2019.\u00a0<\/p>\n Grubbe said the tribe valued the museum\u2019s commitment to \u201cengaging in a respectful and collaborative repatriation process and \u2026 the professionalism and care demonstrated throughout these discussions.\u201d He added that repatriation makes way for stronger relationships between institutions and Indigenous tribes in the U.S. and that it contributes to preserving cultural heritage.\u00a0<\/p>\n The Federal Register also issued a notice of intended repatriation July 15, which detailed that campus will return a headdress that belonged to Jim Badroads, who had been chief of the Cayuse Indians on the Umatilla reservation along the border between Oregon and Washington.\u00a0<\/p>\n Previous acts of repatriation in accordance with NAGPRA have returned artifacts to the Morongo Band of Mission Indians<\/a>, most recently, and to groups in Hawaii<\/a>. These moves to repatriate items come after U.S. senators said in 2023 that campus had failed to fulfill NAGPRA requirements of reporting inventories of the items that it held.\u00a0<\/p>\n Inventories and summaries of artifacts are required in order for museum and federal agencies to repatriate the items.\u00a0<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"UC Berkeley is working to return 36 lots of artifacts that are culturally, traditionally or historically linked to…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":407897,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[34],"tags":[163568,163569,34030,14760,2289,163570,65153,44568,143,145,144,9549,65152,149],"class_list":["post-407896","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-oakland","tag-agua-caliente-band-of-cahuilla-indians","tag-agua-caliente-indian-reservation","tag-cahuilla","tag-dan-mogulof","tag-hawaii","tag-jeff-l-grubbe","tag-morongo-band-of-mission-indians","tag-nagpra","tag-oakland","tag-oakland-headlines","tag-oakland-news","tag-palm-springs","tag-phoebe-a-hearst-museum-of-anthropology","tag-uc-berkeley"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/407896","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=407896"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/407896\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/407897"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=407896"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=407896"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=407896"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}