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The Dartmouth
July 26, 2025 | Latest Issue
The Dartmouth

Hood Museum may return Native American remains

This spring the Hood Museum of Art hopes to return to the Abenaki Nation of Missisquoi human remains found near Lake Winnepesauke and donated to the College in 1945.

The interred remains of a 10- to 12-year-old Native American child had washed out of a site on the banks of the lake and were sent to the Dartmouth Medical School for forensic examination.

They were subsequently donated to the Hood Museum.

The area where the remains were discovered falls within the territory widely recognized as that of the Abenaki Nation of Missisquoi (Western Abenaki).

The Missisquoi, however, are not a federally recognized Indian tribe, and thus have no legal standing for repatriation claims under the Native American Graves Protection and Repatriation Act of 1990 (NAGPRA).

To facilitate the repatriation, the Hood Museum has petitioned the NAGPRA Review Committee for release of the remains, with the support of Donna Roberts, repatriation coordinator for the Abenaki Nation of Missisquoi.

The committee has granted permission for the repatriation process to move forward, contingent on publication of the Abenaki Nation of Missisquoi's claim regionally and then in the Federal Register.

If no other group or individual claims the remains, they will be repatriated and reinterred in the spring.

"As with most Native peoples, we believe our Ancestors should be returned to the Earth Mother as expeditiously as possible in order for them to finally continue on their journeys, which have been so abruptly interrupted," Roberts said.