From the State Auditor's report:
Key Findings and Recommendations
The federal Native American Graves Protection and Repatriation Act (NAGPRA), passed in 1990, and its 2001 California counterpart (CalNAGPRA) establish requirements for the return of Native American human remains (remains) and cultural items. Government agencies and museums, including universities, must repatriate, or return, these remains and cultural items to tribes affiliated with them. This audit is the third that our office has conducted of the University of California’s (university) compliance with NAGPRA and CalNAGPRA. To complete this audit, we reviewed four campuses—Berkeley, Riverside, San Diego, and Santa Barbara—as well as the Office of the President and conclude the following:
The University Does Not Know How Much Work Remains to Achieve Full Repatriation and Has Not Properly Cared for All Items It Possesses
Although we found that campuses have continued to repatriate remains and cultural items, it has been more than 30 years since the establishment of NAGPRA, and the university’s campuses still hold the remains of thousands of individuals, as well as hundreds of thousands of cultural items and potential cultural items. We refer to these remains, cultural items, and potential cultural items as collections. A variety of factors, including some that are outside of the university’s control, create uncertainty about when the campuses will complete repatriation of their collections. However, at their current pace, we estimate that it may take some campuses over a decade to reach full repatriation.
Further, additional collections continue to be revealed. In one case, we found that Santa Barbara had not reported all of its collections to the national NAGPRA program and its state equivalent and, because of that, it is likely that tribes have an incomplete understanding of that campus’s holdings. The campuses also continue to discover previously unknown collections. For example, both Riverside and San Diego recently discovered previously unknown remains on their campuses, and Santa Barbara identified approximately 1,500 potential cultural items about which it was previously unaware. Although the university’s systemwide NAGPRA policy (systemwide policy) requires campus NAGPRA staff to periodically search campus departments at high risk of having undiscovered NAGPRA collections, campuses’ searches are not complete, and the Office of the President has not systematically kept track of the searches campuses have performed
Finally, we found instances in which the university has not properly cared for all items in its possession. For example, Santa Barbara has not yet retrieved several outstanding loans of potential cultural items, and Davis displayed potential cultural items in a campus lecture hall from which they were stolen in 2022. The systemwide policy does not explicitly state how campuses should handle or store potential cultural items.
Despite Years of External Attention, the Office of the President’s Oversight of Campuses’ NAGPRA Implementation Is Deficient
The Office of the President has not effectively overseen the university’s compliance with NAGPRA, despite years of increased external attention. We found that the Office of the President has not created a framework of policies and practices that ensures accountability for compliance or effective and efficient repatriation. For example, the Office of the President required campuses to plan for how they would repatriate their collections, but it did not hold campuses accountable when the plans lacked required timelines or when campus plans became outdated. The university’s systemwide NAGPRA committee (systemwide committee) noted deficiencies when reviewing the plans, but the Office of the President did not require campuses to make corrections, thereby limiting the usefulness of these plans for the systemwide committee’s efforts to oversee campus repatriation.
Also, since 2022 when it established its expectation that campuses plan for repatriation, the Office of the President has not established systemwide performance goals for repatriation. Although campuses established certain campus-specific goals, the Office of the President did not hold campuses accountable for their actual performance. For example, the Office of the President has not monitored whether campuses have met their goals to repatriate specific collections within the last few years.
Because the university lacks systemwide performance goals, it has contributed funding toward NAGPRA compliance without a clear understanding of whether these amounts were appropriate. The Office of the President’s review of campuses’ NAGPRA budgets noted whether these budgets balanced personnel and non‑personnel costs, but it did not determine whether the budgeted amounts were appropriate for meeting specific goals or benchmarks at each campus. Each campus’s budget represents the total amount of resources the campus plans to spend on its NAGPRA activities. However, we found that three campuses—Berkeley, San Diego, and Santa Barbara—carried over to future fiscal years significant amounts of unspent funding they had allocated to NAGPRA, including funding meant to support tribes.
Given the pervasive weaknesses we observed in the Office of the President’s oversight of NAGPRA, we believe the Legislature may have a role in applying external accountability—such as by earmarking a specified amount of the university’s appropriation identified for NAGPRA—to improve the university’s performance.
Recent Changes to Federal Regulations Present Challenges to California’s Repatriation Goals
Effective January 2024, the federal regulations that govern the implementation of NAGPRA changed. Some of these changes have significant impacts for CalNAGPRA, which used to provide an avenue for the transfer of certain remains and cultural items to non-federally recognized California tribes. The revisions to the federal regulations no longer allow campuses to transfer certain remains and certain items to non‑federally recognized tribes, severely hampering campuses’ ability to fulfill the intent of CalNAGPRA. We identified no clear path for the State to amend CalNAGPRA to allow for campuses to transfer certain remains and items to non‑federally recognized tribes in conformity with NAGPRA. However, the university can initiate discussions with tribal stakeholders regarding any preferences they may have for reinterment protocols and adopt these protocols as part of any revised systemwide policy.
To address our findings, we have made recommendations to the university to create a strong system for identifying undiscovered remains and items and strengthen its requirements regarding the proper care of potential cultural items. We recommend that Santa Barbara report all of its collections as required. We further recommend that the Office of the President require campuses to create and update timelines for completing specific activities, establish systemwide performance goals, monitor the university’s progress in meeting its goals, and ensure that campus budgets align with those goals. In addition, we recommend that the university engage tribes to study their costs related to repatriation and align its systemwide policy with the revised federal regulations.
Agency Comments
The Office of the President and Santa Barbara agreed with our recommendations and stated they would implement them...
Full report: https://www.auditor.ca.gov/reports/2024-047/
Summary of recommendations: https://www.auditor.ca.gov/reports/responses-2024-047-all/
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Note: The report includes a recommendation to the legislature to provide additional funding for repatriation.
