"This is the law," Isaac said. "Somehow or other, we have to meet with it."

And other museums are facing the burden of similarly large costs for compliance with NAGPRA.

"The Berkeley campus has funded for a period of time...compliance with the NAGPRA," said Fritz Stern, NAGPRA coordinator at the University of California at Berkeley. "Between the spring of 1993 and June 30, 1996 Berkeley will have spent $300,000 per year for the three years."

The Repatriation Effort

According to documents from the museum, the Peabody Museum has human remains of about 12,000 individuals, about 40,000 associated funenary objects and about 400,000 unassociated funerary objects.

"We are in full and enthusiastic compliance [with NAGPRA]," Pilbeam said. "We have been in contact with some tribes and initiated the repatriation of some material and human remains before we were legally required to do so."

He said the Peabody Museum has repatriated three collections of human remains, including 50 individuals to the Narragansett in 1972, before NAGPRA, six individuals to the Northern Cheyenne in 1993 and 167 individuals to Hawaii in 1994.

"All I know is that they were human skeletons representing the remains of individuals," he said.

Isaac said the condition of the human remains vary by individual.

"Some we have a complete skeleton," she said, "sometimes just one bone."

Isaac said the museum has also repatriated some artifacts as well.

The Peabody Museum returned a sacred pole to the Omaha in 1989 and a war god artifact to the Zuni, according to Isaac.

Edward Halealoha Ayau, a member of the Hui Malama group of native Hawaiians, said his organization's experiences with the Peabody Museum were positive.

Hui Malama, a group caring for the ancestors of Hawaii, was the recipient of the 167 human remains from the Peabody Museum.

"We approached [Peabody Museum] by writing a letter requesting any information about Hawaiian remains," Ayau said. "The museum responded that they [had remains, so we began the] consultation process."