Amended Native American repatriation measure heads to full Senate
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[May 05, 2023]
By NIKA SCHOONOVER
Capitol News Illinois
nschoonover@capitolnewsillinois.com
SPRINGFIELD – For decades, Illinois has failed to return Native American
remains and belongings to their communities despite a federal law
mandating states to do so.
Illinois has the second-largest collection of unrepatriated Native
American remains in the U.S., housed at the Illinois State Museum, but
the sponsors of a bill moving through the state legislature are trying
to change that.
“The goal is more than just a system that recognizes Native American
tribes and their state and their rights to their ancestors’ legacy,”
Sen. Cristina Pacione-Zayas, a Democrat from Chicago and sponsor of the
bill, said in committee. “It recognizes that the state has an
indispensable role to play in redressing harms made by and creating
systems that ultimately protect Native American burial sites moving
forward.”
House Bill 3413 would streamline the process in which Illinois returns
Native American remains and materials to their communities. The bill
passed unanimously in the House in March and an amended version cleared
a Senate committee unanimously this week, sending it to the full Senate
for consideration.
The measure would expedite the process in which the Department of
Natural Resources would identify, examine and repatriate Native American
remains, creating a procedure in which the state would consult with
affiliated tribal nations and increase IDNR’s control in the process.
For 30 years, the state museum has resisted returning remains and
materials back to their original communities, according to a ProPublica
investigation. Despite the 1990 passage of the federal Native American
Graves Protection and Repatriation Act, the state museum still maintains
one of the largest collections of Native American remains in the
country.
That law provides a process for federal agencies and museums receiving
federal funds to repatriate or transfer their collections to lineal
descendants or tribes. As of 2022, the Illinois State Museum had only
returned 2 percent of the 7,700 remains it reported to the U.S.
government, or just 156 individuals.
The Dickson Mounds Museum is Illinois’ biggest offender of the federal
repatriation law. Based in Fulton County, the museum was built around an
exhibit that displayed the open graves of over 200 indigenous people.
The exposed human remains were displayed for decades before the exhibit
closed in the early 1990s following the passage of the federal
repatriation act.
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Sen. Cristina Pacione-Zayas, D-Chicago,
is pictured on the floor of the Illinois Senate. (Capitol News
Illinois file photo)
According to the investigation, the museum preemptively designated any
remains dated to before 1673 as culturally unidentifiable. When the
federal repatriation law was passed, the museum returned at least 117
ancestors to the Peoria Tribe of Indians of Oklahoma and transferred
ownership of more than 32,000 funerary objects to the tribe.
This initial effort marked them as compliant with the law but, in the
decades since, the museum has prioritized research over repatriation.
Records obtained by ProPublica found the museum has approved almost
every request to research its human remains collections from 1990 to
2018.
According to ProPublica, the museum has committed to repatriate about
1,100 tribal ancestors from Dickson Mounds. If successful, this effort
would be the largest repatriation effort in the state’s history.
The Prairie Band Potawatomi Nation, a federally recognized Native
American tribe in Kansas with historic ties to Illinois, advocated in
favor of the bill.
“This legislation puts respect to our history and our ancestors the way
they should have been respected centuries ago,” Joseph Rupnick, tribal
council chairman for the Prairie Band Potawatomi Nation, said in
committee.
Rep. Mark Walker, D-Arlington Heights, said figuring out how to handle
remains has been more difficult than he initially thought. He cited
privacy as an issue they have tried to address in the bill.
“If we found [remains] at some known site that many tourists go to, many
of the tribes have said they don’t really want them reburied there,”
Walker, the bill’s lead sponsor, said in an interview. “They want them
someplace that isn’t going to be a tourist attraction.”
HB 3413 allows IDNR to establish burial sites for Native American human
remains that are closed to the public. The sites would be protected by
the state and allow for the burial of repatriated remains, unregistered
graves, grave markers or grave artifacts following tribal consultation.
Additionally, the bill creates the Repatriation and Reinterment Fund in
the state treasury. For any violators of the act, restitution will be
collected and distributed in the fund. The fund is also subject to
appropriation in order to cover costs including the reinternment,
repatriation, repair or restoration of human remains.
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