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All but one Cal State campus have Native American remains and cultural items that federal and state laws require them to return to tribes. In many cases, the process has been slow.
Though the size of their collections varies, campuses like Cal Poly Humboldt and San Francisco State have made progress in returning human remains and cultural items, with Sacramento State having returned most of its Native collections. But others, like Cal Poly Pomona, have yet to see much progress and Cal State Bakersfield has not made any returns.
The Cal State system holds the remains of more than 2,000 Native Americans and more than 1.57 million artifacts, according to the most recent list of the system’s collections. Another 500,000 collections of items are still in storage awaiting proper tribal review to be cataloged.
Campus officials say they are working diligently to follow legal mandates to return items to tribes, but the road can be long and arduous.
Last February, members of the Konkow Valley Band of Maidu tribe reburied three ancestors whose remains had been held at Sacramento State since 1963. The Lake Concow Campground donated 10.7 acres of land to the tribe within their traditional territory in Northern California, where they were able to perform the reburials.
“During the process it’s a very, very heavy feeling,” said Matthew Williford Sr., the tribal chairperson and cultural resource director. “But when you receive the remains back, you feel lighter. It doesn’t feel like so much weight.”
If collections stay in storage, for Williford, it’s as if “nobody knows that we were ever around.”
“It’s important for us to get that back, because we believe that those items still have spirit,” he said. “They need to come back to the people.”
Federal and state Native American Graves Protection and Repatriation laws require agencies and institutions with Native American remains and cultural items, such as the ancestors’ remains from Williford’s tribe, be returned to tribes. While there was not a deadline for when collections had to be returned, federal law required campuses to complete an inventory of their collections by 1995.
As of February 2025, Sacramento State had repatriated 89 percent of the human remains and 68 percent of the cultural items on their campus. That means control of the collections has been legally transferred to a culturally affiliated tribe, but collections may remain physically held by the campus if requested by the tribe. The figure also does not include what the campus holds for other state or federal agencies.
“Some tribes want us to hold on to collections, in which case we might do a held trust agreement, where we just are saying, ‘We’re holding this for you until you’re ready to take it for repatriation,’” said Sarah Eckhardt, Sacramento State’s repatriation coordinator.
Eckhardt has been the repatriation coordinator for more than six years, overseeing the university’s compliance with repatriation laws and policies. Eckhardt shared that the campus has a good relationship with local tribes, to whom the majority of their collections belong, allowing them to repatriate the collections effectively.
The amount of cultural items at Sacramento State decreased significantly from about 30,000 in 2024 to about 6,000 in 2025.
To move forward with repatriation, universities have to contact potential culturally affiliated tribes, based on geographic location or historical evidence, for consultation. Then, tribes can submit a request for repatriation.
While the process can be slow, multiple tribal leaders said that the campuses are supportive and are up against federal and state rules that complicate returns for non-federally recognized tribes. There are also times of confusion over who exactly has authority to make those returns.
Sacramento State reported an increase in their collection of human remains from 171 in 2024 to 223 in 2025, which Eckhardt said was due to some confusion over who manages them.
“There were several collections that we thought were the responsibility of another agency, that they denied responsibility for and so we accepted responsibility for that,” said Eckhardt.
Near the end of 2024, 32 boxes containing three human remains and cultural items previously held at Sacramento State were returned to Williford’s state-recognized tribe. But since they are not federally-recognized, federal law meant they’d have to partner with a federal tribe to claim the collections on their behalf, and also have local tribes sign off on the handover, said Williford. That process took about six months after a notice was published to the federal registrar, which informs other tribes in case any want to rebut the claim. To him, that was a quick timeframe.
“At least they’re trying… I think they need to up their game on helping nonfederal tribes with federal repatriation,” said Williford.
