State institutions still hold Indigenous remains

Some government agencies and universities in Washington state continue to hold the remains of Indigenous people, despite a 1990 law that requires them to work to return those remains to tribes.

By the numbers: According to ProPublica's database, 10 institutions in Washington state still had the remains of Indigenous people in their possession as of December.

  • Of those, some have made the vast majority available to tribes for repatriation. For instance, the University of Washington had only one Indigenous person's remains, after making the remains of 281 others available for return to tribes, according to ProPublica's data. UW didn't provide details about why that last set of remains was still in its collection.

Meanwhile, Western Washington University had returned only 3 sets of Indigenous remains, while 89 remained in its collection, per the database.

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