Editor’s note: This is the second in a two-part series. The first, “Native return,” ran June 25.
Whiteboards crowded with titles and case numbers loom behind Jonathan Malindine’s desk at the Santa Barbara Museum of Natural History. The museum’s Native American Graves Protection and Repatriation Act (NAGPRA) officer has underlined some in red and circled others in blue.
“We’ve got, I’d say, 40 cases that are ongoing,” he said. “It’s a lot of keeping plates in the air.”
Each case holds a different history to untangle: decades-old records, fragmented documentation, and questions about where ancestors and cultural belongings should return.
“The process is, we reach out to the tribes, we have these materials, we think they’re eligible,” he said. “We talk to every tribe, make an agreement on who’s going to take the lead, write up the paperwork, send it to the feds. They publish it online.”
“Consultation, consultation is the key to all NAGPRA work,” he said.
Repatriation—returning a person or item to its place of origin—succeeds only when institutions build relationships with tribes, he explained, as opposed to treating returns as paperwork or a legal obligation. Instead of waiting for tribes to reach out, Malindine often initiates those conversations.
He did that with the case of beads recovered from a cave in Indian Wells near Palm Springs. The museum wasn’t quite sure how the objects were used by the tribe in question, so he reached out.
The tribe told Malindine that there was a cremation site roughly 1,000 feet away suggesting the cave had been used in burial practices.
“We think they were using that cave to prepare the ancestors, and those beads have been found in graves. So we repatriated it,” Malindine explained. “They now have ownership and control, and they requested that we curate it on their behalf until they’re ready to pick it up. So it still hasn’t left the building, but ownership has been transferred.”
At the Santa Barbara Museum of Natural History, he said, this sort of approach has shaped the pace and scope of repatriation efforts.
“Our museum collections were primarily Chumash—have always been,” he explained. “So we had about 2,000 ancestors here, probably 98 percent of those were Chumash. Those are already returned. We’re 100 percent in compliance now with the feds and with ProPublica. We still have a few ancestors … that I’m working to repatriate.”
In 2023, ProPublica created a database tracking the number of ancestors that institutions around the country hold in their possession. The data highlighted institutions out of compliance and put public pressure on them to get up to date.
Malindine puts a lot of time and care into repatriation, making sure it’s done the “right way.” When preparing ancestors for return, for instance, Malindine uses all natural materials.
“Most tribes want the ancestors to be prepared using all natural materials,” he said. “No plastic. None of this foam stuff.”
He hand sews pillows from unbleached cotton muslin, uses cotton string and paper tags, crumpled-up paper, wood, and cardboard.
“It just shows respect,” he said. “We don’t want [to use] anything that wasn’t around when they were [alive].”
The approach reflects a philosophy Malindine returns to repeatedly. It’s not simply about complying with regulations or closing cases.
“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.”
Access barriers
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.
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 and return. But Piatti said federal funding rules often override that flexibility.
“If there’s any federal money tied in anywhere, they have to default to the federal NAGPRA law,” he said. “So every university … has to follow the federal standard because of the money involved.”
That hierarchy, he explained, shapes everything from who gets notified to who ultimately receives the ancestral remains.
“Federal recognized tribes first and foremost, they get priority,” Piatti said. “Because of the money involved.”
The result is a repatriation landscape where legal recognition can matter as much as geography or cultural continuity. Across the Central Coast, multiple tribal groups often assert connection to the same sites—places like Morro Bay and Cuesta Ridge—where archaeological and oral histories overlap.
“Who belongs where? And whose remains are you looking at?” Piatti said. “Who do they belong to?”
Those questions determine whether a tribe is included in decision-making.
In many cases, Piatti said, institutions provide tribes with massive digital inventories of remains and artifacts—sometimes tens of thousands of entries—without clear provenance.
“You get to go in and play with the record that is your record and yours alone,” he said. “Everybody else puts you into a big collective comprehensive pot and lets you choose and pick and fight and argue amongst yourselves.”
In addition, origin stories for the items or remains are often incomplete.
“It just showed up at their university one day,” he said. “Nobody knows where it came from.”
For non-federally recognized tribes like the Salinan, the barriers extend beyond access to records. Capacity also becomes a limiting factor. Without museums, dedicated funding, or storage facilities, even successful claims can raise the question of what happens next.
“We’re a landless tribe,” Piatti said. “We have no real funds to put forth to the effort to not only collect the stuff, but to curate and house it.”
In practice, that often means different outcomes for different materials. Cultural objects may be divided among tribes or retained for education. Human remains, Piatti said, are ultimately returned to the earth.
“Human remains go in the ground. They just do,” he said. “We have dedicated spots … where we can put people back in the ground.”
But even reburial is shaped by legal and institutional determinations, including “most likely descendant” designations and disputes between tribal entities.
“It really is a troubling issue,” he said. “Who has the right to it, who’s going to pay for it, what’s going to happen to it.”
At its core, Piatti said, the issue is about belonging, authority, and whose histories are treated as actionable.
“It’s a great concept,” he said. “There is something here that needs to be done, and they’re trying to do right. But it’s way more convoluted than they’re thinking.
Reach Staff Writer Chloë Hodge at chodge@newtimesslo.com.
This article appears in July 9 – July 16, 2026.
