Remains representing more than 600 Native American individuals sit in collections at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill’s Research Laboratories of Archeology — the state’s oldest North Carolina-focused archeology center.

Those remains have not been made available for return to tribes, despite a federal law intended to facilitate the repatriation of Native ancestors and related funerary artifacts.

Laura Pellicer of member station WUNC reports.

This story was co-reported with Lilly Knoepp of Blue Ridge Public Radio.

This article was originally published on WBUR.org.

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