SACRAMENTO, United States, Sept. 1 (Xinhua) -- California's universities, including prestigious ones, have been under fresh scrutiny for failing to return hundreds of thousands of Native American remains and artifacts to their tribes of origin timely.
For three decades, the California State University system and the University of California system have largely failed to comply with a federal law and a state law mandating the return of Native American remains and cultural objects.
The efforts of holding the universities accountable were renewed this week at a hearing in state capital Sacramento, where state lawmakers and tribal leaders questioned the schools' administrators on their handling of these artifacts.
"Our ancestors are not some trophies to be highlighted in a classroom," California State Assemblyman James Ramos, a Native American, said at Tuesday's hearing. "It's time that we bring our ancestors home," he said.
California State University officials apologized to Native tribes during the hearing and said they would make plans to oversee system-wide compliance with the repatriation of those ancestral remains and artifacts.
The artifacts were looted by researchers and museum collectors from Native American homes, graves, and places of worship in the 1800s. Artifacts were often taken as "souvenirs" from battlefields and massacre sites.
The federal Native American Graves Protection and Repatriation Act of 1990 requires campuses and museums to return Native remains and artifacts to federally recognized tribes.
California's 2001 version of the law requires the return of Native American materials to all tribes, not just those that are federally recognized.
To find out the scale of the possessions by universities and the progress of repatriating those remains and cultural items, California underwent an audit surveying all university campuses.
The audit, completed in June, found that 21 of California State University's 23 campuses possess nearly 700,000 cultural artifacts, and only 6 percent of artifacts have been returned.
Sonoma State University, located in Northern California, with more than 185,000 artifacts, has more than any other campus but has repatriated less than 1 percent of its collection.
California State University, Sacramento, has 114,000 Native American items yet to be returned. The school leaders said they planned to return half of them within a year.
San Jose State University, a public university in San Jose, which holds 5,500 Native items, "had very minimal repatriation activity," and returned less than 1 percent of its collection, according to the audit.
The university was involved in a scandal in 2021, when an anthropology professor, Elizabeth Weiss, posted a photo on social media, in which she smiles and holds a Native American's skull barehandedly.
Under pressure, the university and Weiss reached an agreement in which she submitted her resignation effective on May 29, 2024.
University of California, Berkeley, has the largest collection with nearly half a million items. It is still in possession of approximately 350,000 remains and artifacts, according to the audit.
Other campuses of the system, such as UC Santa Barbara, UC San Diego and UC Riverside, also maintain large collections of Native American remains and artifacts.
Tribal activists criticized the universities for improperly handling their ancestral remains, saying the bones were placed in rows of shelves and at times the skulls were separated from the rest of the body.
The state audit also blasted the University of California Office of the President for not making repatriation efforts a priority, citing in the report a lack of critical funding and planning.
California has the United States' largest Native American population and is home to 109 federally recognized tribes.
But the state's violent and unjust treatment of Native American people in its founding days is little known today. Up to 16,000 Native Americans were murdered in cold blood after California became a state in 1850, according to the History Channel.
In 2019, Californian lawmakers issued a public apology for the genocide the state carried out against its indigenous residents. ■