Ohio History Connection working to repatriate major collection of Indigenous remains

At the end of a long day of work, Nekole Alligood says goodbye to her charges, flips on the night lights lining the room, and closes the door behind her. Sometimes they answer back: a whisper of her name or a knock from the top shelf. After three decades in the business, Alligood, the Native American Graves Protection and Repatriation Act (NAGPRA) Specialist at Ohio History Connection, knows to just keep walking. 

“I talk to my folks that I take care of,” said Alligood, 60, who relocated to Flint Ridge Memorial State Park from Oklahoma for the job in 2021. “Whenever I have a new intake, I introduce them and ask everyone to be kind to one another.”

Her “folks” are the largest collection of unrepatriated Native American human remains in the country. ProPublica estimates the remains of 7,167 individuals were housed in Ohio History Connection’s collection facility in early 2023, though Alligood calls that number conservative. 

“We are the unofficial state repository for human remains,” Alligood said of criticisms of the institution’s staggering collection. “We will never be empty. There’s always going to be intakes. The construction of roads, construction of homes, erosion, there’s all kinds of things that will bring folks to the surface. If you’re not going to put them back, then they’ve got to go somewhere.”

The only place many of these remains are going, though, are the shelves of Ohio History’s facility. Under NAGPRA, a federal law enacted in 1990, agencies and institutions that receive federal funds must repatriate all Native American remains and other cultural items in their possession to the appropriate tribe, through a process of defining cultural affiliation with contemporary tribes. 

In theory, it might seem like a program dedicated to belatedly righting some very grievous wrongs. In practice, it is illogically funded and easily evaded by some, Alligood said. 

“At the end of every [grant] I’ve written, ‘National NAGPRA needs to increase the grant size or create a standalone grant to employ people to do this work that the federal government has mandated,’” said Alligood, who worked as the NAGPRA Officer for her own tribe — the Delaware Nation of Oklahoma — prior to joining Ohio History Connection. “The biggest issue is not having enough people.”

At Ohio History Connection, Alligood works with full time NAGPRA cataloger Stephanie Kline, a part-time NAGPRA assistant, and a handful of unpaid interns, often students from The Ohio State University with an interest (and a know-how) in osteology. Her requests for a third full time NAGPRA employee have gone unanswered. 

Alligood and her team approach the task of determining cultural affiliation by grouping eight to nine Ohio counties into clusters. All of the remains and material found in a specific cluster are examined and presented to the tribes together, a process that can take years from start to finish. 

The first cluster, eight counties in the northwestern corner of Ohio that Alligood grouped in 2021, produced their first repatriation in June, when a group of remains claimed by the Miami were reburied on Otterbein Island. A second group, claimed by the Shawnee, will likely be laid to rest at Johnston Farm in Piqua, Ohio, where a secluded five-acre piece of land has been set aside for such burials. 

“Our general rule among removal tribes is, we’re not going to bury these people where we live now,” Alligood said, noting that every tribe that once inhabited Ohio was forcibly removed from the area by the Indian Removal Act of 1830. “They’ve never been [there]. So being able to have this burial ground is really important to me too, because we can offer space for tribes that need to put their people in Ohio, but don’t necessarily have land.”

It isn’t just the reburials where the culture and traditions of the tribes are honored, though. Alligood makes efforts to ensure that the human remains in her care are treated with the respect owed to ancestors. 

At the request of the tribes, Alligood and her team bundle each set of remains with unbleached muslin and cotton twine once examination has been completed. Before the inventoried boxes are returned to the shelves, bags of tobacco and cedar, handmade by Alligood to feed and calm the spirit, respectively, are placed alongside the bundles. After a reburial, the box that once held the remains are burned. 

It’s these everyday dignities that keep Alligood from becoming overwhelmed by the work ahead of her, and by the silent displacement of the deceased that surround her.

The tribes aren’t asking for their human remains and cultural objects back out of selfishness, says Alligood. Raised by her grandparents, she can recall her grandfather’s stories of his time at a government school, and the language that he and his siblings were all fluent in but never spoke outside of the house. 

“It’s not a ‘get even’ or a ‘gotcha’ or anything,” said Alligood, reflecting on why repatriation is so important. “It’s a, ‘Hey, those belong to our people and there’s not much that does anymore.’ So they’re important, I think, for tribal morality and spiritual morality, for [the tribes] to feel good knowing that their ancestors are at peace.” 

Alligood knows there’s a long road ahead of her to make that peace a reality for every tribe. She dreams of a collaboration among the six museums that hold Hopewell remains to inventory the collections, consult with the tribes, and hold a group repatriation ceremony. 

For now, though, she has her eyes set on the two reburials set for this summer, a consultation on the current cluster’s associated remains scheduled for August, and the Ohio Tribal Nations Conference, which will be held from October 21 to 25. 

There’s a story that Alligood likes to tell when asked why she uprooted her life to move across the country and start a new job at an age when most are starting to eye retirement. It starts on a hot fall day, on a mountain in West Virginia free of roads and power lines: the perfect place to finally lay to rest the remains of two adults and three children, decades after they had been unearthed. 

“We were preparing [the remains], bundling them for burial,” said Alligood, glancing down at her hands. “Just as we were about to walk over and place them in the ground, this breeze, just out of nowhere, came through. And all the leaves were circling and falling in it. And all of us just stopped. Everybody’s looking at each other. All I could think is, ‘There’s your thank you.’” 

Emma Baum writes for TheReportingProject.org, the nonprofit news organization of Denison University’s Journalism program, which is supported by generous donations from readers. Sign up for The Reporting Project newsletter here.