The Auditor of the State of California found that of the 21 campuses with NAGPRA collections, more than half have not repatriated any remains or cultural items to tribes and that two campuses that returned remains or cultural items did not follow NAGPRA requirements when doing so.
More than half of these 21 campuses do not yet know the extent of their collections of remains and cultural items, despite federal law requiring them to do so by late 1995.
In part because campuses have not prioritized NAGPRA, they generally lack the policies, funding, and staffing necessary to follow the law and repatriate their collections.
Factors such as these have contributed to the CSU system making little progress in the timely return of human remains and cultural items to tribes, repatriating just 6 percent of its collections to tribes to date.
