Facilitating the Reburial at Angel Mounds State Historic Site: Issues Encountered and Lessons Learned

The Indiana State Museum and Historic Sites (ISMHS) is a museum system composed of 12 historic sites throughout the state, including the Indiana State Museum located in Indianapolis. In the spring of 2021, one of the largest repatriations in the United States to date took place at the southernmost of these historic sites, Angel Mounds State Historic Site (AMSHS). The ISMHS served to facilitate the repatriation, ensuring that the ancestral remains and associated funerary objects would be returned to the landscape from which they had been excavated in the early through mid-twentieth century. In this article, we will focus on ISMHS's approach to the repatriation and reburial from the perspective of the landowners or, more precisely, the stewards and managers of property owned by the state in the public trust. Using the example at AMSHS, we outline how we navigated recommendations and requirements from Indiana University (IU), consulting Tribal Nations, state and federal agencies, the ISMHS, and others to assist in moving the repatriation and reburial forward. It is hoped that this account will provide other landholding and managing agencies or organizations with one example of how the process can be navigated.