Menominee Tribe reburies ancestors returned from mound and school sites

The Menominee Tribal Historic Preservation Office is bringing home 67 Menominee ancestors and 3,967 associated funerary objects for reburial under the Native American Graves Protection and Repatriation Act. The remains and objects were excavated from the Riverside Cemetery site on the Menominee River in Menominee, Michigan, and the collection includes hornstone blades.

The return reaches beyond one burial ground. Tribal material tied to the Menominee River landscape also includes an ancestor from the Chalk Hill Mound Group near the Menominee River and Sixty Islands, along with a cranium recovered from a school site. Those different places show how widely Indigenous burials and remains were disturbed, and why repatriation remains central to the tribe’s work.

For the Menominee Indian Tribe of Wisconsin, the repatriation is a homecoming as well as a legal process. Bringing ancestors back for reburial restores them to the care of the Nation after years of removal and excavation, and it reaffirms the tribe’s responsibility over its burial places, funerary items, and cultural heritage. The Menominee River and Sixty Islands are part of that deeper presence in the region, where the tribe’s history is tied to the land itself.

The Menominee Tribal Historic Preservation Office is handling the return on behalf of the tribe, using NAGPRA to recover remains and funerary objects that belong with the community. In Menominee County and across the wider Menominee homeland, the work connects families, elders, and tribal institutions to a shared obligation: protect sacred places, bring ancestors home, and keep the community’s history in Menominee hands.