Leaders from Oregon tribes and Oregon State University gathered in mid-October for a reception after moving Native ancestors’ remains and personal belongings to a new, off-campus building. From left to right, Wasco Chief Jefferson Greene; Confederated Tribes of Warm Springs Tribal Council Representative Wilson Wewa; Oregon State President Jayathi Murthy; Oregon State Vice President and Chief Diversity Officer Scott Vignos; Oregon State Native American graves protection and repatriation director Dawn Marie Alapisco; Oregon State Director of Tribal Relations Chance White Eyes and Confederated Tribes of Coos, Lower Umpqua and Siuslaw Indians Chief Doug Barrett posed for a photo.Alteza Films
After more than a year working with tribal leaders, Oregon State University erected a facility to house ancestral remains and cultural items that rightfully belong to Native peoples as the college works to repatriate them.
Oregon State University, like other universities across the country, currently possesses ancestral remains of Native Americans as well as funerary items taken from the original inhabitants of U.S. land. The school is legally obligated to return them to the tribes they belong to under the 1990 federal Native American Graves Protection and Repatriation Act, or NAGPRA.
Oregon State’s two new adjacent buildings provide space for consultations with tribal members and a records room, according to Dawn Marie Alapisco, who coordinates the university’s compliance with the federal law. Several tribal leaders and staff members said they felt the process of designing and creating the space represented a shift toward truly prioritizing their requests in discussions with the university.“Anytime an institution puts its energy and resources into a project like this, it helps clarify their seriousness or the genuine nature of their intentions,” said Chinook Indian Nation Chairman Tony Johnson.
Briece Edwards, manager of the Confederated Tribes of Grand Ronde’s Historic Preservation Office, said the facility represents a move from seeing universities as permanent stewards of ancestors and belongings to temporary ones.
That’s particularly significant given the extent of the issue nationwide: ProPublica estimates that the remains of more than 110,000 Native American, Native Hawaiian and Alaska Native ancestors are held by universities, museums and federal agencies.
“When we’re talking about a change for betterment and a potential model for elsewhere, that’s the scale,” Edwards said.
Repatriation is often a challenging and slow process, Alapisco said.
Many ancestors and personal belongings arrived at Oregon State University by way of its Horner Museum, which accepted them as “donations.” A professor who ended his career at the university also left some he’d appropriated to Oregon State.
The trails those remains and possessions traveled are often unclear, as associated documents don’t always include complete historical records. That makes it difficult to figure out which tribes ancestors’ remains and possessions should be returned to.
“We don’t have very good provenience,” Alapisco said. “What we know is they came into our possession from this situation, but before that, we just don’t have records.”
Until October, remains of Indigenous people and their personal belongings were held at Oregon State’s Gilkey Hall, in the middle of a busy and crowded campus. With the building undergoing a multimillion-dollar renovation to house mental health services for students and employees, university officials deemed it no longer suitable for such a sensitive and private use.
So Oregon State began reaching out to tribal leaders last year, asking them what they thought a preferable facility for repatriation might look like.
They settled on two small adjacent buildings in Corvallis, off campus and out of the way. That was deliberate, said Buddy Lane, the cultural resources manager and a tribal council member of the Confederated Tribes of Siletz Indians.
“We didn’t want a big show of things. It’s a very modest structure,” Lane said. “I remember making a point that this isn’t a spectacle.”
Edwards agreed, saying the process felt “respectful of cultural protocols.” University spokespeople quickly made the switch to use language he considered more respectful, like “ancestors” instead of “remains.”
Edwards said he wanted to keep many details of the building design private, concerned about setting up a “moment of further extraction” after centuries of oppression that stripped away many cultural practices.
The top priority, though, according to Oregon State Director of Tribal Relations Chance White Eyes, was “making sure that (ancestors) were safe and that their dignity was taken care of and understood.”
Tribal leaders, university staff and other Native American students and faculty came together to move the remains and funerary objects from campus to the new facility in mid-October. Repatriation work is now taking place in the new buildings.
Oregon State was responsive and communicative throughout the process, Johnson said. But at the same time, he’s frustrated at having to count on the support of individual universities. The Chinook Indian Nation is currently federally unrecognized, and as a result, it lacks legal rights like those outlined in NAGPRA.
“We can’t rely on the goodwill of individual institutions,” said Rachel Cushman, the Chinook Indian Nation secretary/treasurer. “With federal acknowledgement — or we call restoration, because that’s what it is — they would be obligated across the board.”
Nevertheless, she appreciates that Oregon State is “doing the work” on its own.
Edwards said the university’s respect for tribal members’ views and the resources it has dedicated to the NAGPRA office offer the true lesson for other institutions holding remains of Native ancestors and their belongings — above and beyond the development of new buildings.
“There can be a lot of talk of, ‘Ooh, there was a need for a building. They got a building. End of story,’” he said. “This is not an endpoint. And so we’re seeing that momentum carry forward.”
— Aviva Bechky covers politics and education for The Oregonian/OregonLive. They can be reached at abechky@oregonian.com or on X at @avivabechky.
