Remains of hundreds of Native Americans at State Museum of Pennsylvania

The State Museum of Pennsylvania has the 24th largest collection of unpatriated remains in the country, according to a ProPublica investigation.

The remains of 908 Native Americans are housed in the museum.

The collection is largely a result of excavations in the late 19th and early 20th centuries amid a boom in the anthropology and archaeology fields.

"Sacred gravesites were robbed and dug up by the early anthropologists and these were taken to museums as artifacts and specimens,” said Stephanie Sellers, professor of Native American studies at Gettysburg College and a senior advisor for the college’s Land Acknowledgement Committee.

In 1990 a federal law called the National American Graves Protection and Repatriation Act (NAGPRA) declared that remains "must at all times be treated with dignity and respect." The law directed museums and other collections in possession of certain Native American human remains, funerary objects, sacred objects and objects of cultural patrimony to repatriate remains to their original tribes.

The State Museum of Pennsylvania identified 169 remains as belonging to one of eight federally recognized tribes.

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