Tuesday, 28 July 2026, 23:15
After nearly 150 years away, approximately 167 Chumash ancestors and more than 2,000 cultural items have returned to the Santa Ynez Valley from the Peabody Museum at Harvard University and the Yale Peabody Museum. The repatriation, finalized on June 27, 2024, marks a significant milestone for the Santa Ynez Band of Chumash Indians. The items arrived by truck at the Santa Ynez Chumash Museum and Cultural Center after a multi-day cross-country trip. The earliest collection dates back to 1877, and the tribe was separated from their ancestors for more than a hundred years. Marshall tracked the truck on GPS for its entire journey. The artifacts, dating back thousands of years, were long confined to wood trays and boxes at the museums, which Chumash representatives described as “cruel and inhumane.” Marshall was in Boston when they packed the semi-truck with more than 2,000 remains and artifacts—filling it almost to the brim—and flew home to meet them.
Kathleen Marshall, NAGPRA representative for the Chumash Elders Council, led the effort. She described years of difficult conversations with museum officials, complicated by frequent leadership changes at Harvard. Despite setbacks, Marshall emphasized that persistence and transparency built a respectful relationship. The revised NAGPRA rules in 2024, which mandate tribal consultation and prioritize indigenous knowledge, were instrumental in overcoming bureaucratic hurdles.
Marshall noted that the repatriation followed two separate NAGPRA notices issued by Harvard and Yale, and took four years to complete, with many visits to the East Coast. She said, "These two institutions have proven to be a rewarding endeavor. They learned from us, they listened. It did not come without conflict and hard conversations, but ultimately, they did the right thing." Marshall added, "I promised my ancestors that I was gonna bring them back, and it took a while, but we did it."
Jane Pickering, director of the Peabody Museum at Harvard, said, "We are tremendously grateful for their generosity and trust as we worked through the process to return these important items home." She added, "The Peabody Museum is committed to conducting repatriations in ways that help heal the wounds of historical trauma and with a deeper understanding of our responsibilities to tribal communities past, present and future." Jessie Cohen, assistant director of repatriation at Yale Peabody Museum, noted that this was the museum's largest repatriation of cultural items to date. Cohen said, "The removal of these materials from traditional Chumash homelands has caused trauma and harm, and we hope their return brings healing to the tribe."
Marshall emphasized that the ancestors will receive proper ceremonies with all Chumash nations and be returned to the land they came from. "Our ancestors and their belongings were stolen from their resting place, a place where their families and communities prayed and grieved, leaving them to rest," she said. "For them to be taken, stolen and put in wood trays or boxes, traveling all over the country and all over the world, is cruel and inhumane." While ancestors will be reburied, returned objects will be archived with the tribe and used to teach future generations. Ceremonial items will be used once again in ceremonies. Their ancestors’ belongings were originally buried with them, meant to not be seen or used again. Through those items—things like stone bowls, pestles, arrowheads, and effigies—"you can see who the person was," Marshall said. Sadly, in most cases, their ancestors’ individual belongings were separated from their owners.
The Santa Ynez Band of Chumash Indians is the only federally recognized Chumash tribe in the nation, with a reservation established in 1901 in Santa Barbara County. The repatriated items are now housed at the Santa Ynez Chumash Museum and Cultural Center, where tribal elders will oversee their care. Many ancestors were originally buried with belongings, making them targets for 19th-century collectors like Stephen Bowers, whose looting disrupted sacred sites.
However, not all California tribes have the same standing. Under federal NAGPRA law, institutions receiving federal funding must consult with and prioritize federally recognized tribes when human remains and cultural items are identified in collections. That requirement effectively excludes more than 50 non-federally recognized tribes in California from direct repatriation authority, even when they maintain cultural and ancestral ties to specific regions. For instance, the Santa Ynez Band of Chumash Indians is a federally recognized tribe, while the Salinan and yak tityu tityu yak tiłhini Northern Chumash tribes aren’t. California’s parallel law—CalNAGPRA—was created to expand and strengthen repatriation within the state. Passed in 2001, CalNAGPRA requires state agencies, museums, and universities to work more broadly with California tribes and, in theory, offer more inclusive pathways for consultation.
Robert Piatti, a tribal council member of the Salinan Tribe of San Luis Obispo and Monterey Counties, thinks NAGPRA is a good concept, but he also believes that the reality of its inner workings is complicated. "It’s a great idea," he said. "Things should be returned to the people and put back the rest. That’s really what we’re striving for." In practice, Piatti said, the system determining who those people are is more constrained than the law’s intent suggests.
The Native American Graves Protection and Repatriation Act (NAGPRA) was enacted in 1990 but lacked enforcement mechanisms until 2024. The updated regulations require federally funded institutions to consult with tribes and respect tribal knowledge. This case exemplifies the law's impact, as Harvard and Yale cooperated fully after the changes.
At the Santa Barbara Museum of Natural History, NAGPRA officer Jonathan Malindine manages about 40 ongoing cases. He emphasizes that consultation is key to successful repatriation. Instead of waiting for tribes to reach out, Malindine often initiates conversations. For example, beads recovered from a cave near Palm Springs were repatriated after the tribe explained the cave's use in burial practices. The museum transferred ownership, but the tribe requested the museum curate the items until they are ready to pick them up. Malindine also ensures that ancestors are prepared for return using all natural materials—no plastic or foam—to show respect. He hand sews pillows from unbleached cotton muslin and uses cotton string, paper tags, wood, and cardboard. "We’re trying to do these repatriations in a good way," he said. "Not just do a repatriation—do a repatriation in a good way."
Malindine noted that the Santa Barbara Museum of Natural History's collections were primarily Chumash, with about 2,000 ancestors, 98 percent of which were Chumash. Those have already been returned, and the museum is now 100 percent in compliance with federal regulations and a 2023 ProPublica database that tracked the number of ancestors held by institutions, putting public pressure on them to update their records. Malindine still has a few ancestors to repatriate.
The original indigenous name of Santa Barbara is Syuxtun, and the original peoples are the Chumash, who have settled the region for over 5,000 years. They call the broader region Siujitu and were caretakers of the western gateway of the Pacific. Several Chumash villages flourished in what is now Santa Barbara: Syuxtun, the largest village, located between Bath and Chapala streets; Mispu, now occupied by Santa Barbara City College; Amolomol, at the mouth of Mission Creek; and Swetete, above the present bird refuge.
The return of these ancestors and cultural items is a step toward healing historical trauma. Tribal leaders hope this collaboration sets a precedent for other institutions and tribes, ensuring that sacred objects and human remains are treated with dignity. Marshall noted that there is still much more work to be done: "The work definitely isn’t finished." The Santa Ynez Chumash has gone through similar processes with the Santa Barbara Museum of Natural History and UC Santa Barbara. In 2022, the museum returned more than 1,000 human remains and UCSB returned more than 400 remains and 4,000 funerary objects.
Marshall said she hopes this repatriation inspires other tribes, when they’re ready, to seek the return of their own cultural items. "It takes a lot of time, a lot of effort. It takes money," Marshall said. "A lot of tribes aren’t ready, but when they are, they definitely need to know that they have a seat at the table, and that our cultural knowledge plays a huge part in bringing back these artifacts and these items." She added that she hopes other institutions follow the example set by Harvard and Yale. "Harvard and Yale are very big institutions, very well known, and it’s important that all other institutions follow suit and understand that they did the right thing in returning all these items and all these people," Marshall said.
