Joint Legislative Audit

We'd like to call the Select Committee on Native American affairs and Joint Legislative Audit Committee to order. But before we do, we want to offer up a traditional song for the topics that we're going to be discussing here today. That song's a Serrano bighorn sheep song.

And bot is a bighorn sheep, the nivet searching for the bighorn sheep. Still, what we're doing here today is searching for our loved ones to be able to come home for a proper reburial. And we want to get an update from the series of panels that we have here today. Just overview of that.

We have a panel on the overview at audit report by the California State Auditor's Office. We also will have responses and comments by University of California. And then we'll have tribal response and perspectives.

I want to recognize the tribal affiliations that we have here in this room here today, but also want to recognize the ancestral territory and the land that we conduct business on here in the state capital as the Miwok, Nisenan people and Potawans across the river.

And we want to bring this oversight hearing of the Joint Legislative Audit Committee and the Select Committee on Native American Affairs.

At today's hearings, we will discuss the findings and recommendations from a recent audit report by the State Auditor titled the University of California's lacks the accountability and urgency necessary to promptly return Native American remains and cultural items.

I want to thank the Assembly Member Harabedian, Chair of the Joint Legislative Audit Committee for agreeing to hold this hearing here in this chambers. Also want to thank my colleagues that have joined us here today. And we have a lot of things going on today.

So some Members will be coming in as they continue to present their bills in other committees. I also want to thank tribal chairs and the tribal perspective and the tribal Members that are here today to show their support, but also their perspective on why it's so important for these remains to come back to a resting place.

I also want to thank the state auditors office and the State Auditor himself for continuing to bring forward the audits of these things that have happened in the State of California. We worked together on many issues and we continue to look forward to working with you in the future.

I finally, I want to thank the UC system for continuing to come forward and having meetings in our office. I think from 15 years ago to where we are today. I think there's support trying to build mutual respect to ensure that these remains come back into the resting places of California's first people, all California's first people.

And as we review the audit.

We want to make sure that there is the urgency to get the remains back into the rightful people here in the State of California, California's first people, for proper reburial, and identify any roadblocks that are there so that we can work together as a Legislature in a tribal community to make sure that we're tackling those roadblocks that are ahead of us.

The four campuses that were surveyed for the audit was Riverside, San Diego, Santa Barbara and Berkeley. And we'll have different data statistics on those.

We continue to work together in the Legislature, and we know that when the audit came out that there was a lot of uproar and a lot of existing trauma that's continuing to affect California Indian people by these remains not coming back to the rightful people here in the State of California.

And so we talk about historical trauma, but we also have to start talking about the contemporary trauma that's still being inflicted upon California Indian people by not moving forward and having full repatriation of the remains that are in the archives of the ucs.

Not only the ucs today, they're here in front of us, but also the Cal State universities and the community colleges. We want to make sure that they understand that we need to get those remains back to the rightful people, California's first people. And we will move forward with the hearing.

But we do want to open up the mic to offer Chair Harabedian some opening comments.

Thank you. Good morning. And thank you to Senator Ramos for those remarks. And thank you to everyone for being here at today's hearing. This hearing has particular significance and meaning to me, not only as a Californian and as the chair of jlac, but as someone of Cherokee ancestry and descent.

We are here because this is a very serious topic. It's a very serious issue. And I believe everyone can appreciate just how personal and sacred this topic is for all of us, whether we are Native or not. And what we're going to be discussing today is the return of Native American remains and belongings.

These items belong to their descendants. Let's be very clear. They belong to them legally, morally and rightfully. It's that simple. There's no debate or equivocation on this issue, and we need to get it right. If you unearth someone's family Members or ancestors, whether it be intentionally or unintentionally, you do not keep them.

You return them, and you do it promptly, and you do it with expeditious and all legal means until it's finished. We have not seen that yet. And that's why we're here today. And we will continue being here today in these hearings until it is done.

We as a state are falling fall short of our duties and everything that we need to do on this topic. And Chairman Ramos has done herculean efforts over the years to make this a priority for us. But it shouldn't just be one person's mission.

And with the help of the tribes, this has become a issue that all of us now feel passionately about. And it's about time.

But I will tell you that the Legislature on the Assembly and the Senate side are arm in arm and hand in hand in continuing to fight to make this right and continuing to make sure that every ancestral belonging remains anything that is still in the repositories of the UC system, the Cal State system, the community colleges that they are returned and they are returned immediately.

The Audit Committee and Select Committee on Native American affairs have approved and conducted a series of audits and hearings on this. And I want to thank former chair of JLAC Senate Member Hart for conducting hearings on this last year. This has been a team effort.

What I gather from the most recent state auditors report and I want to thank State Auditor Park Parks for being here is that we need progress and we need it much, much faster. And I think that there's no mincing words about that. We have not done enough.

It's been nearly 35 years since NAGPRA, the Native American Graves Protection and Repatriation act was enacted and the UC system still has not even determined how many remains it needs to repeat repatriate. That's unacceptable. It's absolutely unacceptable. And we're going to hear from the leaders here today. Appreciate you coming.

But as educators, as folks who oftentimes grade progress of students, we can say that we don't have a passing grade, we are still failing. And I think we need to very seriously consider how we can all work towards getting an A on this. And right now we are not even close to that.

The Office of the President needs to provide leadership and oversight on these repatriations. And what does that mean? It means we need firm timelines at both the system wide and campus level. And we need real meaningful progress when that will be made.

We also need them the UC system to work hand in hand and we've said this before with the tribes to repatriate their ancestors returns. This shouldn't be a process that's done around the tribes, should be done hand in hand with the tribes in consultation with tribal leaders.

And we will hear from those tribal leaders today and just conclude by saying, Chairman Ramos, thank you again for all your leadership, for making this a priority not only for first nations native Californians, but every Californian. Because I think the exposure that many of us because of your work have had to this issue have been shocked, frankly.

And I think that we are now at a point where we don't want to have to come back year after year and conduct hearings and hear from folks who oftentimes say the same thing over and over again. What we want is action. We want progress.

So thank you for all the work that you have done and it's really an honor and a privilege for JLAC to hold this hearing. Want to thank staff for making sure that this happened. So thank you.

Thank you so much, Chairman. We do want to also recognize the Members that are here. Member Mike Fong, Member Hadwick, Member Sharon Quirk Silva and Assemblymember Hart. And open up the dais for any comments from the Members.

Mr. Fong, thank you so much, Chair Ramos. And thank you Chair Harbiden as well. Thank you so much, Chair Ramos for your tremendous leadership and advocacy and legislation in this very crucial space. And thank you to our State Auditor's office for helping to make sure that we hold our institutions accountable.

State audits in the past few years have found inconsistent compliance and NAGPRA as referred for many different reasons.

And I was disappointed that the latest audit of the UC showed a lot more work ahead to create the appropriate oversight needed to make sure that all our University of California campuses and all of our institutions of higher learning respectfully and promptly and identify all and repatriate all remains and cultural items from the previous work in advocacy.

Last year, Charmos, we had a an oversight hearing with the CSU system as you mentioned as well. And we know that there's been many listening sessions. Much more work to be done on a system wide NAGPRA policy, but also looking at campus wide oversight committees with full time repatriation coordinators.

But a lot more work needs to be done as mentioned by Chair Ramos and Chair Harbiedian and my colleagues. And so I look forward to hearing from the UC system today as well as responses from our tribal community leaders here today. And thank you so much Chair Ramos for your tremendous leadership.

Thank you Chairman Fong from Higher Ed. Thank you Assemblymember Hart.

Yeah, I just want to thank everybody who's here today and I also want to express my gratitude to Chair Ramos and Chair Harabedian for holding this hearing. Appreciate the work that the State Auditor has done.

And I want to recognize that despite the fact that we have not had the progress that we're looking for from the UC and CSU systems, that I want to recognize the campuses that have created repatriation coordinators and are beginning belatedly that work that's important to recognize the progress that is being made and urge those folks who have not appointed repatriation coordinators to do so and to have those coordinators begin this work in earnest.

So thank you.

Thank you so much. And we're going to be moving forward with our first panel and we're going to have all the panelists speak and we'll hold questions until the last speaker for the panel itself. As now we'll move to the first panel with State Auditor Grant Parks and Senior Auditor Grayson Hugh. You can begin when ready.

Good morning, Chairman Ramos, Chairman Harabedian, Members of the Committee My name is Grant Parks, the State Auditor. In April 2025, my office issued its third audit of the University of California's efforts to comply with NAGPRA and Cal NAGPRA.

Pursuant to the Health and Safety Code, state law directs my Office to conduct four such audits, and the fourth and final audit is scheduled to commence in 2026.

As many of us are aware, NAGPRA was established roughly 35 years ago and required the UC to inventory aud all Native American remains and cultural items in its possession by 1995.

Federal and state law, along with UC policy, requires UC to promptly complete inventories of the items in its collections, to engage in meaningful consultation with tribes about those items, and to expedite the return and repatriation of Native American remains and cultural items to affiliated tribes, Our latest audit report concludes that after years of California tribes highlighting problems at the campuses after multiple oversight hearings and three audit reports, the University of California unfortunately lacks the accountability and the urgency necessary to promptly return the remains and cultural items in their possession.

More than 30 years after NAGPRA, the UC system continues to hold thousands of Native American remains and and hundreds of thousands of cultural items that may be subject to nagpra. UC campuses continue to find previously undocumented collections since our audit in 2022. For example, three campuses reported new discoveries at Riverside, San Diego, and Santa Barbara.

During our 2025 audit, we discovered that Santa Barbara had failed to disclose at least five collections to NAHC and the national NAGPRA program that the campus's own data had already identified as NAGPRA related.

The UC system lacks clear goals and performance metrics that would allow UCOP and the public to hold campuses accountable for the slow pace of their repatriation efforts.

At the four campuses we visited, we measured the pace of their repatriation activities over a two year period, projecting that at that pace it may take decades to fully return the collections in their possession.

For example, San Diego may need until the year 2037, Riverside 2041, Santa Barbara may need until 2053, and given the large amount of collections at UC Berkeley, we calculate it would need to work five times faster just to return 75% of what it has by the year 2089.

The UC's lack of repatriation goals and targeted timelines, along with limited campus spending, reflects how NAGPRA is being prioritized.

UC Berkeley, which has the largest collection and thousands of human remains, budgeted just 1.6 million for personnel costs in 2324 but spent half of that amount $880,000, and the campus has continued to carry forward millions of dollars in previously budgeted but unspent funds.

At UC Santa Barbara that has over 200,000 potential cultural items that still need to be evaluated. The campus didn't realize that it failed to fully allocate NAGPRA funds to the NAGPRA team, and they weren't aware of this until we raised questions about its budgeting practices in fiscal year 2425.

Santa Barbara originally allocated just $212,000 for NAGPRA activities, and after our questioning, the campus realized it needed to transfer another $900,000 to make up for allocating less than what had been budgeted in prior years.

And further, each of the four campuses that we visited during the audit spent less than half of the funds set aside for tribal assistance, where these funds are used to help tribes defray the costs of travel and other expenses incurred when consulting with the UC.

And although UCOP has fully implemented many of the recommendations from our prior audit, UCOP has primarily done so through issuing various policies and guidance to the UC campuses. However, UCOP generally leaves it up to individual campuses to implement these policies with little oversight or consequence for non compliance.

As we noted in our 2022 audit report, UCOP has historically viewed each campus as being responsible for NAGPRA compliance and the return of its collections, and instead of viewing this as a University wide responsibility, there is a lack of accountability for repatriation planning and execution within the UC system.

In its policy, the system wide NAGPRA Committee is charged with providing compliance oversight and advising the UC President on the University's implementation of NAGPRA and Cal.

NAGPRA in our first audit from 2020, we noted that UC campuses at that time were not required to report the status of its repatriation activities to the and UCOP subsequently agreed to require biannual reporting. In our second audit in 2022, UCOP required campuses to develop their own repatriation timeline, specifying when remains would be returned.

However, in practice, UCOP did not set a deadline for completing these plans, and our 2022 audit noted that none of the campuses had done so. In our third audit, we found that campuses completed plans for but three of the four lacked timelines for full repatriation.

Riverside and Berkeley's plans, for example, did not include a timeline, instead focusing only on select portions of their collections and we noted that one Committee Member at the NAGPRA System Wide Committee noted that Berkeley's plans were confusing and didn't provide a real sense of where the campus was going and its repatriation efforts.

Santa Barbara's plan removed specific goals at it had previously established in its timeline, and three of the four plans we reviewed were generally outdated, having been created in 2023 several years later, making them less meaningful for the System wide NAGPRA Committee.

And further, UCOP's review of campus NAGPRA budgets were undocumented and when compared against repatriation plans that lack clear timelines and goals, it's unclear how UCOP would be able to evaluate whether each campus budget is appropriate to achieve timely repatriation.

So in conclusion, overall the UC's ability to achieve timely repatriation depends on the scope, schedule, and resources it commits to this effort. However, the UC has yet to determine the full scope of its collections, with campuses continuing to make new discoveries and UCOP not ensuring that campuses proactively search for undiscovered remains and cultural items.

UC has yet to establish a clear schedule with campus repatriation plans lacking clear timelines and performance metrics to ensure accountability and to allow the Legislature and the public to monitor progress and UC has yet to adequately Fund NAGPRA as UC can't explain what pace of repatriation it's currently funding while the campuses themselves underspend the amounts budgeted for these efforts.

In our audit report we made several recommendations to UCOP aimed at establishing performance metrics, requiring timelines and ensuring campuses conduct proactive searches, among other things. But one thing I'd like to highlight is that there's a role for the Legislature to play towards ensuring the UC commits the funding necessary for NAGPRA and Cal Nagpra.

We suggest that the Legislature consider defining how much state funding the UC commits to NAGPRA activities through the annual budget process, either by appropriating new spending authority or earmarking a portion of the UC's current appropriation for its NAGPRA work and further specifying how that NAGPRA appropriation would be used, for example, in terms of more full reporting of progress performance goals, so both the public and the Legislature can more closely monitor the UC's progress.

With me today is Grayson Huff, who was the team leader on the audit assignment, and we'd both be happy to answer any questions you may have.

Well, thank you so much. Is there any questions from the dais, from Members? Thank you. And I just want to reiterate, even in your discussion presentation, you mentioned that Even if the UCs put money into a certain area, that money wasn't being used entirely for the purpose. Is that what you reported on?

That's correct.

And this is the third audit. I just want to reiterate that this is the third audit on this topic.

Right, Correct.

And from the first audit to the third audit, have we seen any compliance?

We continue to see problems with the UC demonstrating timely repatriation of the items in its control.

Thank you for that and some of the questions we'll ask again when the UCs come up for their discussion. We do have a question from Assemblymember Sharon Quirk-Silva.

Thank you for your presentation. And I, in fact, have sat on some of these presentations before, so it is a little bit shocking that this is now the third audit. And so some of the same issues that we heard a good amount of years ago are still lingering.

And so my question is, because I know once you leave, then we'll have the other. But what are your thoughts on why, in fact, this has not been made a priority? I know that funding. I know that with universities, there's many, many issues that rank at the top of their list. And.

And this could definitely be pushed either towards the middle or even the bottom, as it appears. But what is your thoughts now that you have been through the third audit of why the progress is not being made?

We've continued to make recommendations to UCOP through our various audits. Historically, it's been the campuses that have been taking the leading role in ensuring compliance with nagpra. But audit after audit, we continue to believe that UCOP needs to take a much stronger leadership position.

They are uniquely placed to make sure campuses are following the policies that UCOP has put out there. I think the problems that we're seeing at this point is UCOP not doing enough to make sure that the policies that they issue are actually being implemented on the ground by the campuses.

And so we'd like to see more effort in that area.

So I would just add, as a former classroom teacher, you know, the structure of how information is presented to a campus usually comes from a Superintendent to a principal and then to the teachers. And the implementation, sometimes with many things on a list, can be disregarded or even, as we see, not implemented.

So I would definitely say this has to be made a priority, as has been suggested and actually directed. But if that is not coming, if we want to say from the top in a way that is made clear, then we will have a fourth audit and progress will still not be made.

You can't have 30 priorities at a University campus, but you certainly need to comply. And I know as a teacher that there were many times I didn't always agree with what was being added to our plate and many times not taken off our plate. But you have to do the job that is told or explained.

And if this is not made a priority at ucop, then this is at least what I can see where some of this problem lies. Thank you.

Thank you so much, Chair harbinian.

Thank you, Mr. Chair. Thank you, Auditor Parks, for the presentation, for all the work, and Mr. Huff, for all your work on the audit.

And I think that one of the most striking things from the audit, as you presented, were these timelines of how long we are looking at just to comply with state and federal law 2089 for the campus of Berkeley. And obviously that is not something that we will allow to happen.

We want to see timely compliance with the law.

So in building off of Assemblymember Quirk Silva's questions, what do we need to do, in your opinion, to speed up these timelines and to ensure that the UC system in this case has and have the resources that they need to implement the repatriation in a timely fashion, in a legal fashion.

What, what could you say are the top two to three things that we need to do? And you did say in your presentation funding. Sure. We, you know, that that is always a. That seems to always be the issue with any audit or oversight hearing that we have as to why something doesn't get done.

There just isn't enough money. I mean, we hear that from every Department, from every nook and cranny of the state as to why problems exist beyond funding. What do we need to do as a Legislature to actually enable them to comply with the law.

I think it goes along with funding. But a part of the funding discussion needs to be a conversation that takes place between the UC system and the Legislature about what is the goal, what is the expectation in terms of timely repatriation. We have hundreds of thousands of cultural items, thousands of human remains.

A discussion about how much funding results in how much progress and speed of repatriation, where that expectation is clear for the Legislature, for the UC and for the public. Right now we have the UC system budgeting funds for NAGPRA without a clear understanding about what goal we're targeting.

And so during the audit, as you noted, we looked at, well, given the pace of progress over two years, where does that lead us to? And it leads us to that very far out year that you mentioned earlier.

I think if the Legislature sat down with the University system and said, how much is it going to take to get this done in 10 years, 15 years, 5 years, what's the number? How much is UC going to pay out of its own pocket? How much additional money does the Legislature want to contribute to the problem?

But it's almost like a performance based budgeting exercise about funding and results, and you have to tie results to the effort that's going to be employed here. And Grayson, I don't know if you had other comments on recommendations that are top priorities. I think that covers it. Yeah.

Appreciate it. Thank you, Mr. Chair. Very helpful. Thank you so much. Assemblymember Hadwick.

Thank you for your presentation. I'm along with my colleagues, quite appalled at those timelines. I was nine years old when this went into effect. And I don't think the people that are sitting in our seats back then thought this would be the conversation that we're still having. And it's unacceptable. I mean, just completely unacceptable.

I'm eager to see. I'm not sure how you have a rebuttal for those timelines and the facts that you guys just gave us. So I'm eager to hear what they say and the next group. But I don't. This is. It's ridiculous. Honestly.

I'm shocked that this is the third audit and we're still having these conversations or shouldn't say. Shocked. I'm not shocked, just embarrassed that this is our progress. I think that this should not take. The timeliness needs to be faster. And I think your budget and your whatever sector you're in shows your priorities.

And if the UC system isn't budgeting this as a priority, then we need to change that. And I think that it also comes from leadership, like my colleague was talking about. So I think you make time for the things that you see as a priority and we have to, we have to change that focus.

I also think that if the tribes had something that the UC system had, this would be a different conversation and that is completely unfair. So I'm looking forward to the rest of the conversation and hoping that this is not the conversation we're having for the fourth audit.

Thank you so much. Any other questions, comments from the dais? I want to thank you, Mr. Auditor and staff, for continuing to show your support on these audits moving forward. You did make a mention and talking about legislative role as consider state funding on appropriations within the budget.

But if I'm understanding it right, it has to come with benchmarks because we've seen that money that's already going towards this topic hasn't been fully used by the UC system.

So there has to be some clarity of what it is we're trying to see with the outcome if money is going to be put back into the budget for that. But we're hearing and we're going to hear from the ucs.

If the budget's there, money is there and it's not fully being used, is the system wide policy an area where we're at and we'll get an update on that moving forward. But I do want to thank you and we look forward to meeting with your office on different considerations for the Legislature as we move forward.

Thank you so much. As we'll move now to our next panel which will be response and comments by the University of California. Kathryn Newman, Provost, University of California, Office of the President Rich Lyons, Chancellor, University of California, Berkeley Hugh Reid, Repatriation Coordinator, University of California, Santa Barbara and Eva Trujillo, Repatriation Coordinator, University of California, San Diego.

Good morning, Chair Ramos and Members of the California Assembly Select Committee on Native American Affairs and Chair Harabidian and Members of the Joint Legislative Audit Committee, as well as tribal representatives and respected guests. I very much appreciate this invitation to speak to you today.

My name is Katherine Newman, and For the past 30 months I've been honored to serve as the Provost for the University of California System. In this capacity, I'm responsible for leading our system's NAGPRA and Cal NAGPRA efforts.

On behalf of our new President, James Milliken, and in collaboration with our subject experts in my office and on our campuses. I want to begin by reiterating our apology and for my personal regret over the University's role in the original acquisition of Native American and Native Hawaiian ancestors and their belongings.

They were obtained in violation of indigenous spiritual and cultural beliefs without free prior and informed consent, and that was unacceptable. I I'm here today to make it clear that UC is actually committed to fully implementing the Spirit as well as the legal requirements of NAGPRA and Cal NAGPRA.

Accordingly, we express our appreciation for the careful attention and recommendations of the State Auditor contained in the April 2025 audit report. We are implementing all of them expeditiously, but I appreciate this invitation to share with you the update the Chairman has asked for on our recent progress and our plans forward.

In the past year, UC campuses repatriated more than 2,800 ancestors and nearly 80,000 of their funerary belongings. An additional 17,000 belongings of cultural importance were also returned this year, as you'll see in the charts that you see distributed prior today's hearing.

Since our new NAGPRA policy was put into place in 2022 and there has been actually a steep acceleration of repatriation activity that would not have been possible without the support and engagement of the tribal nations who committed many hours of consultation with our campuses to see this progress through. Consultation that is required by law.

In total, UC has now repatriated 53% of the ancestors and 54% of the funerary belongings in its holdings. Another 27% of ancestors have been culturally affiliated and are currently available for repatriation. Together, as you'll see in the charts that I hope you have, we've distributed them.

That means that 80.3% of all Native American remains held by the University have either been repatriated or have been published in a Federal Register notice and are available for repatriation as the law requires.

While I appreciate very much the dedication our campus colleagues have shown to get us to this point, we are conscious, as all of you are, that substantial work remains. Thousands of ancestors and hundreds of thousands of cultural items are still held on our campuses.

As a demonstration of our strong commitment to meet these obligations, we are implementing a new plan to accelerate our repatriation efforts with much stronger oversight, as has been requested by the Office of the President. And I want you to know exactly what we intend to do.

First, we will speed our efforts to repatriate the remaining ancestors and funerary belongings held under UC control. We expect to make substantial progress in the next three years with the explicit and timeline goal of completing this work by the end of 2028.

We will accelerate the process, which is absolutely essential, of researching and reviewing collection records, communicating with our tribal partners and inviting them for consultation to further this goal of completing this work by 2028.

We will complete a review of all high risk areas of our campuses for any undiscovered ancestors and potential cultural items by June 30th of 2026. And you can take that to the bank.

We will identify and recall all loans of Native American ancestors and potential cultural items by January of 2026. Those are the timelines you asked for. Those are the timelines we will deliver unless our tribal partners object to their relocation for any reason, as is their right.

We will update all of our campus repatriation implementation plans, which now require establishing clear timelines and expectations for repatriation by December of this year. We are requiring in my office detailed quarterly updates, which we commenced actually on July 31, 2025 to the UC Office of the President to demonstrate consistent progress toward achieving those goals.

And if they fall short, it will be on my plate to make sure we check out why. In addition to these plans, we have committed significant additional resources to facilitate the work that needs to be done on our campuses. This includes over $8.8 million in addition to the funding we've already provided over the next three years.

And what are we going to use that money for? First, we will be enabling them to hire additional staff across the campuses to expand their capacity to meet the goals I've already mentioned to you and to engage in expedient but respectful tribal consultation.

We will use those funds to support our tribal partners by contributing more than we already have to tribal staff time, to transportation costs to lodging, meals, parking and other consultation costs because we hope that that will lighten the burdens associated with the consultation process, which are significant.

We are particularly mindful of the responsibility we have to support the costs and the logistics of Reburial to the extent possible.

Toward that end, as I have mentioned privately to Chairman Ramos, we have identified 20 potential sites on University land throughout the State of California that are candidates for reburial if our tribal partners wish to pursue that option. And we are beginning that consultation process right now so that they can consider those options.

That has sometimes been a barrier. Having appropriate land has been a barrier. We are going to solve that barrier. It's our hope that in identifying these potential candidate sites, we'll have at least a helpful starting point for consultation.

And it is encouraging to me that there are already a number of productive tribal consultations in process about the use of some of these potential sites in the future. Finally, we will provide support to campuses that need to enhance their collections management databases and that will improve their ability to share and consult with the tribes.

We have given considerable thought and I hope this will be as exciting to you as it is to me to the ways in which a University like ours can actually go beyond the letter of the law to act on our commitment to the underlying purpose of repatriation.

With our tribal partners, we are hoping to educate a new generation of repatriation experts for universities and museums across the nation because we've come to understand that there are too few people with the needed expertise.

And that makes it all the more difficult to attend to these responsibilities, both for us and for many other universities, museums, transit systems, and other institutions that are obliged to rectify the wrongs that NAGPRA lifts up.

To address this need, we have committed $400,000 over the next three years to design and implement, in partnership with the tribes, a new certificate program to train experts in this area. And we expect to launch that in 2026.

We are working with campus partners to bring this certificate program into existence and to welcome students, including those who may not have yet obtained a college degree, so they can become experts with the needed experience to contribute to the repatriation process now and for generations to come.

At the request of Chair Ramos, we will also explore ways in which our UC field courses and programs can collaborate with and support our repatriation efforts across the UC system. He asked. We will deliver.

At the conclusion of my remarks, you will hear from my colleague Chancellor Lyons from UC Berkeley, and our campus repatriation coordinators at UC San Diego and Santa Barbara, Eva Trujillo and Hugh Rady. Before they begin, though, I'd like to just share a few other recent successes.

In repatriation at three other campuses because you wanted a complete update. In the past year, UC Davis has invited 176 tribes to consult on campus holdings and has completed over 60 consultation meetings with 28 different tribes. This has enabled our Davis campus to repatriate 25 ancestors and over 8,800 cultural items in last year alone.

Five tribal partners have entrusted UC Davis to respectfully hold ancestors and sensitive items on their behalf while reburial arrangements are underway. UC Riverside has repatriated 62 ancestors since 2021. The campus has consulted with tribes on 80% of the collections under their control, with plans to reach 100% within two years.

As some of you know, UCLA, their work with tribal partners over the last 30 years has resulted in the repatriation of 99.9% of the known ancestors that were controlled by the campus.

In the past year, UCLA has furthered this progress by engaging in 68 consultations with tribal partners toward repatriation of the remaining ancestors, summary items and on duty of care. Nonetheless, I acknowledge that much more work is ahead and we need a stronger sense of urgency to achieve our goals.

Our success is dependent on strong and trustworthy relationships with the tribes, which we are fully committed to nurturing over the long term.

I hope that you will see through our recent actions that we are taking a more aggressive approach to this critically important effort and with much greater oversight by the University Office of the President to ensure that we meet them.

President Milliken and I, along with our campus chancellors, are wholeheartedly committed to fulfilling these goals, as are all the Members of our staff. And, Mr. Chairman, if I may be permitted a personal note here, we would not have made this kind of progress without the extraordinary assistance of our colleague, Joseph Castro.

I wish he could have been here today. He's very ill. He will not be able to join us. But I wanted to dedicate my testimony to him with my thanks for everything he has done to get us there.

So thank you again, Chair Ramos, Chair Harabedian and Members of both committees for the opportunity to speak to you today. I'll be very pleased to answer any questions I can. And now I'm going to turn it over to my colleague, Chancellor Lyons.

Good morning, esteemed tribal leaders, Chairs Ramos, Harabidian and Laird and Members of the Committee, thank you for inviting me to participate in this morning's hearing on NAGPRA. I'm pleased to be here today to provide an update on repatriation efforts at UC Berkeley and to share our progress since I came before you last year.

I am honored by the presence of the tribal leaders today and look forward to hearing their testimony on this critical issue. First, I want to again acknowledge and apologize for the deep pain that the University has caused Native people since our founding.

University representatives and others took ancestors and sacred belongings without tribal permission and held those ancestral remains and belongings against tribal nations wishes for the purpose of research and teaching for far too long.

While Berkeley still has a lot of work to do in acknowledging and owning the very painful history of harm to Native people, in the last several years, the University has abandoned practices that slowed or impeded repatriation and comprehensively reformed and revised our repatriation policies, processes and perspectives.

Once again, I want to clarify and clearly state my strong commitment to the full repatriation of all Native American ancestors and cultural belongings held on the Berkeley campus. During the last year, our NAGPRA Department, situated in my office, has continued to grow and our outreach and consultations with tribes have increased, accelerating progress on repatriation.

As I stated last year, although I'm still learning about repatriation issues, I am fully committed to the campus's return of all Native American ancestors and belongings by the end of 2028. We will accelerate efforts to repatriate all other cultural items and expect to make significant additional headway in the next three years.

I have a graph here that should be in your packet showing our progress during the last five years. In the last 12 months alone, Berkeley repatriated just over 2,700 ancestors, over 29,000 funerary belongings, and roughly 250 other cultural items with additional repatriation scheduled in the coming months.

The campus currently has 2,351 remaining ancestors, or 19% of the total ancestors originally held by UC Berkeley. It still has them to publish in the Federal Register and complete the NAGPRA process. In the last year, the Campus has submitted 14 Federal Register notices.

To give additional context, prior to 2020, notices were published at an average of 1.5 not notices per year, so 14 in the last year, prior rate 1.5 per year. We invited consultation with more than 100 tribes across seven states and completed 266 consultation meetings with 56 tribes and coalitions.

The Berkeley campus has built a team of nine full-time staff dedicated to repatriation, with seven more full-time positions planned in the coming years. The additional staff hired to do tribal outreach has been critical to ensuring responsiveness to consultation and repatriation requests and in proactively extending more invitations to consult.

We have been dedicating significant resources, approximately $2 million a year, to build this team and provide funding directly to tribes for travel, meals, lodging, compensation, and other costs needed for repatriation. We have a number of very large repatriations that require months of consultation and in person time in the collections with tribal representatives.

Often these costs run over multiple years. We have also been building an ongoing funding source that will be available for reburial costs. I want to assure you that our priority in building this fund is to ensure that we can support tribes as soon as they are ready for physical returns and reburials.

We defer to tribal preferences and timelines and must be able to respond quickly to their requests. I'm sure you are aware that some tribes do not have reburial options. With EUCOPS help, we have explored the tribes using specific UC sites for reburial.

We also think that allowing for use of state lands would diversify reburial options for tribes and could be helpful in supporting the State of California's efforts as a whole to accelerate repatriation.

It is also important to mention that UC Berkeley has been a repository for numerous federal and state agencies who historically sent large numbers of ancestors and belongings to our campus for storage.

We do not have the legal authority to repatriate these ancestors and belongings, but we have been actively engaging in consultation with both tribes and controlling agencies in order to expedite the work of those state and federal agencies.

The campus has been dedicating a significant amount of time and effort to assist our state and federal partners in their repatriation activities so that the process for those remains can be expedited for tribes. Finally, I am also committed to building closer relationships with our tribal communities and tribal leadership.

My Chancellor's Native American Advisory Council has recently been reconstituted and I am looking forward to cultivating these important relationships. Comprehensive repatriation is an inseparable and necessary part of UC Berkeley's commitment to a more inclusive community and to better serve all the people of California.

We are committed to ensuring that our repatriation process empowers tribes and happens on a timeline and in a manner that works for each tribe. I have made this a high priority of my Administration and I'm committed to doing all that I can to support the repatriation process in full partnership with our Native communities.

Thank you for your attention and I'm happy to answer any questions you may have.

Thank you so much. Next Presenter.

Greetings, Member of the Select Committee on Native American Affairs, Joint Legislative Audit Committee, and Tribal Nation Representatives. My name is Eva Trujillo, UC San Diego's Repatriation Coordinator, and I would like to thank you for the opportunity to come and speak about UC San Diego's repatriation efforts and progress to date.

Before I do so, I would like to start with an apology on behalf of UC San Diego's past action and inaction related to repatriation of ancestors and cultural items. Our efforts in the past have been insufficient and we acknowledge these failures as historical fact and San Diego's present responsibility.

We recognize that repatriation is not a favor or a box to be checked. It's a legal right for Native American nations and Native Hawaiian organizations and a small part of a much larger healing process. UC San Diego remains deeply committed to completing our repatriation responsibilities and would like to share some of our recent progress.

Prior to August of 2021, UC San Diego did not have a centralized department for stewardship of Native American and Native Hawaiian ancestors and cultural items. Since the establishment of the Repatriation Department, we have successfully repatriated 486 ancestral remains out of 958, reducing the overall total by 49%.

Repatriated 1,794 lots of unassociated funerary objects, four sacred objects, and 126 lots of objects of cultural patrimony. In total, UC San Diego went from 25,301 cultural items to 11,907, a reduction of nearly 53%.

Over the past two years, we've engaged in over 140 consultation sessions with approximately 39 tribes and hosted an additional 20 tribal working group sessions. We have hired an additional staff, an additional full-time staff member, to ensure policy compliance, implementation goals are met, and to accelerate repatriation efforts for all NAGPRA eligible holdings.

Additionally, with the assistance from new staff, we initiated our in-person reviews of campus areas in June of 2025 and have developed a schedule detailing proactive, in-person reviews to ensure all unknown ancestral remains and cultural items are accounted for, appropriately purported, secured, and repatriated.

To address low survey responses and any under reporting, we are currently developing a NAGPRA learning module to distribute to appropriately—to appropriate—faculty, staff, and students on campus.

In introducing the model, the Learning Module, our goal is to provide additional education to assist the audience with survey reporting and familiarize them with NAGPRA and Cal NAGPRA Campus Policy and Law. Members of the Committee, much progress has been made at UC San Diego.

However, we also acknowledge that there is still more work to do, and Native American and Native Hawaiian nations are waiting for their ancestors to come home. To the Native American nations and Native Hawaiian organizations who have waited for far too long, we hear you. We are changing and we at UC San Diego are in action.

I'll hand it over to my colleague from UC Santa Barbara, Hugh Rattie.

Good morning, Chair Ramos, Chair Harabedian, Committee Members, and Tribal Representatives. My name is Hugh Rattie. I serve as the first full time Repatriation Coordinator at the University of California, Santa Barbara. Thank you for the opportunity to speak today.

I'm here to provide an update on the status of repatriation at UC Santa Barbara and to provide—to respond to any questions or concerns that you may have. I began in this role at the start of 2024 and have served in this capacity for approximately 20 months.

My professional background is in archaeology and for the past 12 years, I've had the privilege of working alongside California tribes to protect their cultural heritage and support repatriation efforts. As UC Santa Barbara's Repatriation Coordinator, it is an honor to collaborate with tribal nations across the country to help facilitate the return of their ancestors and cultural items.

I cannot explain why UC Santa Barbara has been far too slow to complete repatriation, nor can I justify the removal of Indigenous ancestors from their homelands that were brought to our campus. It is inexcusable.

However, I can speak to how repatriation efforts are currently operating at UC Santa Barbara and share our plan to complete repatriation of all Native ancestors by the end of 2028. I'm personally committed to correcting the failure and ensuring that tribes are supported in reclaiming their ancestors and cultural property.

The majority of collections at UC Santa Barbara are in the—are curated in the Repository for Archaeological and Ethnographic Collections, which was originally established as a research and storage facility. It does not public—function—as a public-facing museum and research is not permitted on any Native ancestors or cultural items or cultural materials for that matter.

While UC Santa Barbara houses collections from across the United States, most of our holdings originate from Santa Barbara, Ventura, and San Luis Obispo Counties, which is in the ancestral territory of Chumash peoples. Over the past 70 years, UC Santa Barbara has acquired more than 700 individuals of native ancestry and approximately 22,000 funerary objects.

In 1995, UC Santa Barbara prepared their first inventory for repatriation purposes. Unfortunately, that inventory was not finalized nor submitted for publication in the Federal Register until 2012 and not legally repatriated and transferred to the tribe until 2022.

Even more concerning, more than 300 individuals were not included in that effort because they were considered culturally unidentifiable by anthropologists or for reasons unknown. Addressing this oversight became my first priority when I assumed my role.

In the past year, UC Santa Barbara has notified affiliated tribes about these 300 ancestors, more than 300, that had been previously not reported or made available for consultation. We also summarized more than 800 collections representing approximately 135,000 items.

While these collections do not include known ancestral remains or funerary objects, they may contain items that are subject to repatriation. We notified approximately 520 tribes and extended an open invitation to consult on these holdings.

We recently received two claims for repatriation and as a result, we have submitted five notices, more than double what had been done in 35 years, to represent 80 individuals and 700 funerary objects and seven cultural items. We expect to complete these repatriations by the end of October 2025.

We have also notified state and federal agencies with collections that are housed at UC Santa Barbara so that they can initiate their consultation with tribes as well. Additionally, we are in communication with first nations in Canada to voluntarily return their ancestors as well.

To fulfill UC Santa Barbara's repatriation obligations, we have initiated several key efforts to ensure that we complete the repatriation of Native ancestors by the end of 2028. To meet this goal, we recently hired three part time staff members to support NAGPRA efforts and a full-time staff position is currently open. We hope to recruit by the end of October.

Until 2022, our repository was managed by a faculty and graduate student with only 10 to 20 hours of support per week. The creation of a dedicated team is long overdue and essential to our goals. We have also consolidated our staff, our collections, and our finances into one division reporting directly to the Chancellor's designee for NAGPRA.

We are no longer affiliated with an academic department, and our finances are now overseen by the Chancellor's Designee's Chief Financial Officer. We have acquired museum software to replace outdated and disparate records, and we aim to complete this new database by the end of 2025.

Plans are in place to retrieve the remaining four collections, loaned collections that are off campus, by the end of October 2025. To ensure full compliance, we are conducting a systematic review of all campus spaces to identify unreported Native ancestors or potential cultural items.

Priority departments have been identified, and we aim to complete this review by June 2026. Our campus oversight Committee and I are currently revising our repatriation plan to establish clear timelines and benchmarks for accountability. A complete revision of our plan will be finalized this December 2025.

Finally, we will continue to work with tribes to identify reburial spaces, reburial locations on and off campus. Thank you for the opportunity to share this update. UC Santa Barbara acknowledges its past shortcomings and is fully committed to supporting tribes in reclaiming their ancestors and cultural heritage.

We welcome your questions and continued oversight to ensure this work is completed in a timely manner without delay. Thank you.

Thank you so much for all your presentations and discussion around this, and now we'll bring it back to the dais for any questions. So, Member Hadwick.

I have a few questions and then maybe just a comment. What has changed that you feel like now, after 30 plus years, you can complete this by 2028?

Let me take a crack at that. It's a big question. First, we are spending a lot more money. Second, we are hiring a lot of people. And here, sadly, the Federal Government's actions in letting so many talented people go is providing us with an opportunity to hire people with the kind of expertise we need.

It's actually not easy to find those folks. There are some very technical requirements for their background. And this is why the academic program I mentioned to you is so important, because we need to produce more people who can do this work. We have set aside more resources. We have tightened up the reporting needs quarterly now, coming directly into my office.

With Joseph Ramos's help, we've been able to identify those 20 burial—potential burial grounds—because that was a limitation before. It will not be limitation now if it works for our tribal partners.

So, I would say we are in part spurred by the audit and by your interests and concerns and Chair Ramos's support and concern, accelerating all of our attention and bearing down on this. And that is what gives me confidence we will be able to meet this goal.

Okay. And then the other thing, you talked about experts and creating more experts. And I just want to reiterate that you have scholars and resources, but the experts are sitting in this room and the, the experts should always be the tribe, and they should always be held to that stature because they have the wisdom and the rights and the responsibility to protect and interpret their legacy.

Absolutely, which is why that will be a collaborative effort. We would never do this on our own.

So, thank you.

Thank you.

Well, thank you so much. Chair Harabedian.

Thank you, Mr. Chair. Just to build off of that, Ms. Newman, just, we've made this point a couple times about the expertise. We've had conversations about this, and you just mentioned technical background that's needed. What exactly is the technical, technical background?

I mean, I, the report, the audit does a good job of what is actually required to go through a repatriation project and process. And what exactly are we missing in that technical background that is needed to actually comply?

As I understand it, the NAGPRA legislation actually specifies what kinds of qualifications people who work as, for example, our repatriation coordinators must have. There's pretty extensive academic background, there's experience requirements, many years of experience, in order to be sure that the people we contribute to the process meet the qualifications of the federal legislation.

And you know, when I first visited the Berkeley Collection, which is enormous, I was told by my colleagues at Berkeley that they were scrambling to hire exactly the same people everybody was trying to hire because there really weren't enough people who met these qualifications.

Which is why, in spirit of repatriation, we are trying to add to the pool of people who could who do have that expertise and we're hoping that many of our Native American students will be interested in this as a possible contribution to their own heritage and their own careers.

But these are very technical requirements that are in the legislation about who can work on these projects in collaboration with the tribes, which, as you rightly point out, are the real experts.

Just to hone in on that, so, are you lacking expertise from an archaeological standpoint, anthropologic standpoint, scientific DNA standpoint? I actually want to know what are we lacking?

Because obviously, as Assemblymember Hadwick said, and I think a lot of tribal leaders will say, we have experts within the tribal community that can do this work and they want to do the work. And I'm not sure what the actual technical expertise, per the law you are referring to.

So, what exactly are we referring to in terms of the lack of expertise that is out there in the field?

It's not that we lack the expertise, it's that we lack enough people with this expertise. But my understanding is that it requires fairly technical expertise in research areas to be sure the provenance is properly identified. Those are archival skills, osteology skills, geographic skills.

If you really want to hear this in detail, I would prefer to defer to people who know it better than I do, to be perfectly honest. But I know that these are technical requirements and experience requirements, years of experience, that the legislation requires our colleagues to have in order to participate.

But again, Mr. Chairman, I'd be happy to provide a report to you with more accurate details.

I think that'd be helpful and I appreciate you'd willing to do that. How many tribal experts do you have on staff in your repatriation coordinators—any of the folks that are working—how many Native staff members do you have?

I don't actually know the answer to that question. I would say that our primary tribal expertise comes from the tribes themselves as part of the consultation process, which is very elaborate and necessarily so because we are not legally allowed to work on those collections without tribal consultation. That's how the law was written and we respect it.

So, when we say that we've repatriated 2,800 remains, that's been done with the extraordinary and intense—labor intensive—work of our tribal partners, in addition to the staff we hire.

Would you say it's zero? Would you say zero?

I actually don't know. Maybe...even knows. I don't know.

I am a tribal member. I'm a tribal member from the Mesa Grande Band of Mission Indians in San Diego. I came to UCSD as an effort to repatriate my ancestors. So, I know that I can add a perspective of tribal and contribute to tribal govern—government—understanding the tribal government, how, how everything works.

So, I am a tribal member.

Thank you. Then that's good to know. And I do think that's important.

Happy to provide that information as well.

And I do think it's important with the tribal consultations to know that everyone is on the same page and that there's representation within the process, within the system, the UC system, for our tribal leaders and our tribes.

The last point I want to just kind of delve into, and hopefully we can do this quickly, is it seems as though we're talking apples and oranges between what the audit found and the presentation of the numbers here from the UC system.

And that is on, you know, the audit, I think very well spells us out in a couple different places. But the, there seems to be, and I'll quote, there are stark differences between the University's presentation of its progress and the presentation we make in this report.

And what that stems from is, especially with this 2028 timeline, which I think, let's be clear about what the 2028 timeline actually does. The amount of potential cultural items that the audit found is in the hundreds of thousands. Okay.

Is your number, and the UC system has posted numbers as to progress on their website, which doesn't include, let's be clear, doesn't include the potential cultural items that you and your team have actually identified. Is that correct?

Our promise for 2028 refers to culture, to human remains, because that is the highest priority that the tribes have expressed and that we agree with and the legislation calls for. The remaining items—Eva can probably comment more expertly than I can—do number in the hundreds of thousands and that will take longer.

But our highest priority is to respect the need and the demand for repatriating human remains. That's the—that is the 2028 goal that we are committed to. Along the way, however, thousands of cultural items, funerary objects, are being repatriated as well.

That's helpful to clarify the 2028, the human remains. But I do think though this point about what you're reporting on your website and what you've testified here today, I just want to make sure we're on the same page.

You are not including the potential cultural items and the cultural items that you've identified because those numbers, you've, you've mentioned a few. In terms of percentage of progress, that again, on its face, sounds extremely robust.

If you were to actually include the audit, the Auditor's numbers of the potential cultural items, those numbers would be far different and it'd be far lower in terms of progress.

So, I guess the question is why is the UC publishing data on its website as to its progress, which doesn't coincide with its own numbers, in terms of potential cultural items?

And do you think that we need to update the website and just be, I think, a little bit more honest with the public and as to where we are? Because I think your timelines and what we've heard today, again, are just starkly different than the Auditor's report.

I hope my comments have clarified what our commitments are for 2028. It is certainly the case that there are materials that we are still discovering.

And that may be part of the reason we have committed to being sure that by June of 2026, we've done a full inventory of all of the nooks and crannies of our campuses to be sure we found everything that could be part of this.

I don't think there is an inconsistency, but I'm happy to go back and re-examine. We certainly are providing honest information as we understand it, and we do think that significant progress has been made. But I did note that there's a great deal left to be done. We don't disagree with that at all.

Yeah, I appreciate that. I do think that the Auditor would disagree on whether there is discrepancy. And again, I think we're just working from the audit. We're just trying to—we're just trying to use data. And I think that's why we do these audits.

And so, I think the audit actually would, would differ with you on that point. I do think that one of the deliverables from this hearing should be what is being reported on the website.

And I think that's something that we should work very quickly to, to at least be clearer as to what the progress and the percentages are, because I don't think we're talking apples and apples. I think we are talking apples and oranges there.

And I do think, just a final note, Mr. Chair, and I'll turn it over, on page 12 of the audit, again, this goes back to sort of how we're measuring all this. The Auditor talks about these potential cultural items, and specifically, campuses must consult with tribes on these potential cultural items.

And until campuses complete this consultation work, they will not know the true content of the cultural items that they may need to repatriate. So, I guess my question is hundreds of thousands of potential cultural items each exist, as you've reported. Where are we on actually consulting on those hundreds of thousands of potential items?

And where are the timelines on that, on that progress? Because I think 2028 on the human remains is very—that's great to hear. But on this other subset of items, where, where do you think realistically the timeline is going to be on consulting with the tribes and actually repatriating that?

I think that is a very ambitious problem that you've laid out. We are aware of that, that that's the case. We are working assiduously on it. It will take longer to get through all of the items that are potentially, even to know exactly how many there are, because that requires extensive consultation.

Thousands of these consultations are going on every year on our campuses. And we are working very diligently to try to identify all of those materials with those tribal consultations which are required in order to reach a conclusion. I'm happy to come back to you with further information that you're asking for.

I provided you with what I know and I stand by it, but I'm happy to try to reconcile with where there are differences. I think it's that in that potential realm where that probably is the case.

I appreciate that. I think what's really important is actually to make sure that you are internally keeping track of that, those percentages, those meetings, and I think publicly publishing that, because if you're going to publish one number, I think you got to publish the other, so that everyone knows exactly what is happening.

I think that will help us all stay accountable. So, I appreciate your commitments and appreciate your, your answers. So, thank you. Thank you, Mr. Chair.

Well, thank you so much. Assemblymember Garcia.

Thank you. My question is for the Repatriation Coordinator from, from Santa Barbara. The audit did mention that there are outstanding, outstanding loans of dozens of boxes of potential cultural items. What is the status of those items that were identified as outstanding in the audit?

Those are scheduled to be delivered by freight in September and October, as well as one transportation from Los Angeles. So, they are all scheduled to be coming home soon.

Thank you so much.

Well, thank you so much and thank you for the robust questions and comments from the dais. We do have some follow up questions, myself. Certainly, with the panelists that are here today, we have been working trying to bring and identify barriers that need to be addressed, either through statute or policy.

But 35 years is a long time and during that time, there's been different chancellors, different provosts, different Assembly Members. So, how do we get to a point to where repatriation is a top priority of the UC system? And how would that be embedded in the overall structure? Because that's really where we're headed.

So, you have any comments or ideas on how we could get to that point?

It's a very fair point, Mr. Chairman, and I think it's fair to say that we have institutionalized this commitment, so it doesn't matter who's sitting in my seat. That commitment will remain. These requirements for quarterly reports have nothing to do with which of us is in which seat. They are going to be there indefinitely.

The commitment of funding is coming from the Office of the President, regardless of which President is sitting in that seat, and we will be monitoring very carefully how those funds are spent and that they are being spent in accordance with the provisions that we've made.

But most important, we have a very, I think, very strong understanding with our campus leadership. Chancellor Lyons is here today to underlie that.

And that is a commitment right at the top, which, in a sense, supersedes all of us because we do recognize this is an extraordinarily important responsibility for us, for the University as a whole, regardless of who of us is sitting in these chairs.

And if I may just give a concrete example of that institutionalization at Berkeley. So, I mentioned a Chancellor's Advisory Committee on NAGPRA and more widely on tribal affairs, and that it directly connects to me, the person who's responsible for this is a direct report of mine. That didn't used to be true.

That would have to be changed if somebody, if a new chancellor came in, I have no—that shouldn't happen anytime soon. But anyway, those are just some of the examples of how we hardwire. It's right at the top of the organization now.

There's also, when a chancellor comes in, yourself, Mr. Lyons, there's certain priorities that you take on as a structure of the whole UC system. Quality education, ensuring those types of things, those things are embedded, and repatriation over the years hasn't been at the top of the priority. We're hearing now some work that's been done.

How do we get the repatriation—again, this is law that's been in effect for 35 years. There's been compliance and the frustration from the California Indian people, Indian people in general from the United States.

How, how do we get that now embedded to those priorities of quality education, ensuring institution, those types of things gets to that level where when a new chancellor comes in, those are things they cannot defer from, but have to implement.

Maybe I can help with this, Mr. Chairman. As Chancellor Lyons will note, every year every campus must come to the President's Office with a complete accounting of their achievements in a variety of different areas. Until my time, repatriation was not one of the categories they were required to report on. It is now.

So, every year when we review, when the President reviews the performance of each campus on a wide range of metrics, repatriation and progress toward repatriation is now squarely in that priority list that they must respond to, and that is an important accountability device.

When you add to that the quarterly reports, which my office is responsible for, and which my colleagues who are receiving those reports must tell me if anybody's falling short on those quarterly and then we will intervene to find out why. Those are the kinds of devices we use to try to instantiate this as a system priority.

But I think the most important is the annual report, which each campus must come forward with and which we scrutinize very carefully, now requires repatriation as one of those items that are highest priority.

Thank you for that, and I think we still are really looking at the issue of how do we get to that point. Would it be statute, would it be a UC body that approves that as far as long lasting procedures?

I mean, we're going to go through some other questions, and a lot of these questions are geared towards, could be geared towards the positions you're holding now. So, we want to make sure we address those issues, but we need to get to where repatriation—it's a great historical trauma and contemporary trauma towards Indian people.

How do we resolve that? How do we move forward?

We talked about making sure that if field schools were going to move forward, that they have the blessing of the tribe, that they're going out to uncover artifacts on that they have to have the blessing of the tribe before we start to move forward and get to where we're at again with remains being in the archives and curatorial facilities.

So, we have to start doing a better job. And you've been throwing out 2028, but yet the audit identifies UC Berkeley as one of the ones that there, even if they complied with things moving forward, it would take them to 2089. So, are you discrediting that part of the audit to where now you're moving to 2028?

So, are we looking at 2028 for full repatriation from the UC system?

Of human remains, Mr. Chairman, because we understood that to be the highest priority and that is what we were committing to. We realized that the collections at Berkeley and elsewhere will take, their full collections, will take longer to pursue. But we thought that this was the expressed desire of the tribes to bring their people home.

And that is what we've placed as our highest priority alongside all of the other work that needs to be done on funerary remains and cultural items.

So, you're holding to the year 2028 for full repatriation of remains in your archives?

That is what we are aiming to achieve, yes. And we have put the resources behind it and the people behind it. And that is our, that is our goal.

Correct me if I'm wrong. When the audit was done, it was done on four campuses. And how many campuses does UC actually currently have now?

Well, altogether, we have 10 campuses.

So, we audited four, and every time we go out and start to do more research, data collection, we uncover more remains. So, are you taking that into account for the growth versus what you're seeing now to comply with 2028?

Our commitments are system wide, so there was all of—yes, our commitments are system wide.

So, there also was identified in the audit and legislative recommendations for system wide policies we have from campuses. UC Santa Barbara, that's moving forward on certain things. Is what they're moving forward on also system wide for all 11 campuses?

All of our campuses are under the same set of expectations and the same reporting requirements back to the system office and the same quarterly reports. All of them are.

Thank you for that. And also, the, the audit did uncover that even though there was financial commitment, not all of the financial committed dollars were used to go towards a priority that was there.

Yes. I think it's important to understand why that might happen. That's still within the sincere spirit of repatriation. When our campuses identify materials and publish them in the Federal Register, they know that there are outstanding expenses that will need to be covered when those materials are finally transported home.

And they are reserving that funding to make sure it's there in order to accomplish that goal. So, this, the fact that there are reserves there doesn't mean that there isn't attention to the issue. It's a little bit more like an earmark, if you will. But it's holding those funds so that their commitments can be realized.

So, I do think it's important for people to understand it doesn't mean that the work isn't being done. It's the funding is being set aside to accomplish a purpose that takes some time. Between the point of publication, the point of actual physical movement, it can be a year or more.

Thank you for that. And also, we wanted to highlight something that the UC is doing. We are running a current bill on Cal State universities to do a surplus of their landholdings to look at a barrier that we've seen and come up in different hearings. Some tribes not having land base for proper reburial as worst case scenario.

I had to move a piece of statute legislation to have that move forward. The UCs have taken that on their own and have moved forward to identify worst case scenario for reburials to move towards the effort of getting repatriation and remains back into the ground here in the State of California.

But we also want to make sure that every step of the way that that is being done, that there is input from the tribal community to make sure that we are addressing that.

So, I wanted to thank you for that and really show that there is a difference 35 years ago to the body that we're talking to now. Is it because of three audits that the state has done?

Is it ultimately the UC's understanding the horrific treatment towards Native American people, that the remains that are in their archives are not to be considered trophies? Is that type of persona of the UC system starting to change from within?

Mr. Ramos, my own personal opportunities to speak with you have helped me a great deal to understand the urgency, and that, in turn, has inspired me and my colleagues to turn back to the resources we have and ask what can we do to do a better job? That is a very sincere commitment on our part.

But I think you personally and our tribal partners have helped us understand where those barriers are. Even knowing that the absence of potential land was a huge barrier was important.

The reason why UCLA has been so successful repatriating 99.9% of the ancestors they held is that they identified land that was part of the natural reserve system that was appropriate to their tribal partners. Well, we've now done that for the whole system, and my hope is it will have exactly the same effect it's had at UCLA.

But our understanding, my understanding, of where the barriers lie and then where the solutions lie comes from these conversations, and I'm grateful for them. The audit also has been very helpful. We acknowledge the needs that we must address.

The audit does have several recommendations for the Legislature, and the Legislature will be taking those into account, as well as what's been testified here today with the year 2028. I think we have to start to look at some of those for ongoing discussion.

I do think that potential statutes to embed this as a top priority is also worth discussion. We've also talked about barriers, and UCs have moved forward with a certificate program to start to bring in those.

And I wanted to see if you could enlighten members here and those in the chambers on the necessity of that of NAGPRA versus Cal NAGPRA and those requirements there.

Again, there are very technical requirements for participating in the repatriation process. And we are very grateful that we have extraordinary coordinators who've met those requirements, but are not very many of those people.

And so, as an educational institution, we are hoping to address this, not just for ourselves, but to provide expertise that CSU would be able to use, that the Caltrans system, anybody who holds these collections is going to need, and the tribes themselves, for that matter.

So, we're hoping their sons and daughters will think of this as a potential career that would be a way of contributing to their own tribal heritage and solve this egregious problem. But in honesty, it's something we felt an educational institution can do. No other institution can do that.

And we hope that that will be a contribution to a national problem. We assessed this. There are more than 400 institutions that need to hire people with this expertise. There are no other universities that are trying to do this.

So again, my hope is that it goes deeper than just what our legal commitments are, to our moral commitments, our social commitments, and to the things that only a university can do to be helpful to solving a national catastrophe.

Thank you for that. We would look forward to getting any of the criteria for that certificate program that we could help spread out through the tribal communities. But we also, for my colleagues and those in the chambers, with the NAGPRA, federal versus the state, Cal NAGPRA, we do know that a lot of remains in the archives of the UC system in Cal States and community colleges are—were—inadvertently dug up before, possibly the State of California, that have ties to different tribes throughout the State of California, in this nation, Hawaiian brothers and sisters that visited these areas.

But we also know that we have to get those remains back into the ground. So, identifying barriers like the certificate program, different barriers that are there. Are there other barriers that you might want to bring forward to this Joint Committee that we should look at that might not even be in the Auditor's Report?

I know that one of the difficulties is making sure that our tribal partners actually have the time and bandwidth themselves, because we are asking for a great deal of their own commitment and time. And they have other—they have jobs, they have lives. It's not a simple matter for them to set aside that time.

This is why we've tried to help by providing more resources for them to make that an easier chore, so to speak.

But I also hope that if we are able to develop this educational program, that that their sons and daughters will find this of interest because they also need more people, in a sense, to help with this identification and consultation process.

And if we were able to help the children of the tribes become experts with these technical skills, that that will amplify the population of people who can be helpful.

Thank you for that. And we'll hear from our next panel on some of these discussions that's going on here. And Mr. Lyons, Chancellor, you mentioned that there's items that need to be repatriated, but you don't have the authority to repatriate them. Can you elaborate a little bit more on that?

Yeah, there are people in the room with greater expertise than I have. But the agencies, state agencies, for example, if a road is being constructed and things are being dug up, it would be a state agency that would take initial possession of those remains.

And over many decades, state agencies have entrusted Berkeley for—UC Berkeley—for storing those remains. We are not the legal owner of the remains. The federal agency or the state agency is the owner. We are storing and supporting, but we don't have the legal right to repatriate them. We try to support their repatriation.

So, the year 2028 to repatriate the human remains that are in your archives could be—a barrier could be that you don't have the authority for some of the state agencies' inadvertent discovery of Native American remains?

I believe that to be correct.

And if we could walk through that process, a state agency is out there, levees, transportation, all those different things. Inadvertent discovery of remains come up. They use the UC system as a repository, curatorial facility, to comply with law. And then those remains stay in basically in your care or in your possession.

Can we get an idea of how many remains are actually in the possession of the UCs that fall under that criteria?

I don't have the number for the whole of the UCs.

We'll look at that information because then, legislative wise, with colleagues on this dais, we could start to look at holding those agencies accountable. We did talk about making sure that if field schools were going to continue to happen, that they have the understanding and the blessing of the tribes that are going to be going out there.

I think it's time that we start to move forward on the state agencies also. And thank you for bringing that up.

I don't know if that's thought process on this dais, but I think that's something that we're looking forward to get some of that information back and could be potentially a request of an audit through the JLAC Committee to look into those areas, potentially.

But we also wanted to identify a couple things that, as we move forward, that we want to see compliance with the law. One in the audit identifies 2089, and you're saying that by 2028, you're going to make it a policy that the UCs will repatriate the human remains that you have authority to repatriate.

Now, we have to deal with authority of those that actually are using it as a repository center there. Right?

That's our goal, Mr. Chairman, for sure.

And we want to get updates to find out where we truly are. You talked about quarterly updates moving forward. If we could be privy to some of that outside of the structure, that would be good purview to keep us updated in the tribal communities. We do understand that there is barriers, barriers that need to be addressed.

California Indian people, California Indian tribes, way before the state became a state. Some of those remains are in the archives of the UCs, and not only UCs, Cal states, and even community colleges. It's time that we get those remains back to the rightful people. But we have been in dialogue.

I want to make sure that we're painting that picture. We have been in dialogue with those presenters that are here that are trying to move forward. We're just grappling with the idea of how do we create an institution that has the embedded, embedded responsibility, quality education, right? Ensuring that people go out educated in the State of California.

Those are pillars of the UC system. How do we get repatriation up to that status, up to that level to ensure that after 2028, we're not sitting here again with all the remains in the archives that are there? That's where we're really headed to. And we are taking the dates that you're putting out, 2028.

We would like to see it done sooner. We probably want to get progress reports to it. And we're looking at whether it should be in statute, whether it should be in a policy that's system wide.

Those things are still open for discussion, but we do, as the legislative body, Joint Select Committee and JLAC are looking at the recommendations of the Auditor to make sure that we are complying and moving forward. Any further discussion from the dais? Well, thank you so much.

Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

As now we're going to move to our next panel, Tribal Response and Perspectives. Chairman Leo Sisku from Tacha Yokut Tribe, Mary Ann Carbone, Mayor Sand City and Vetura Chumash, Chairman Jack Potter, Chair Redding Rancheria, Chairman Valentin Lopez, Ahmet Mutzin, Tribal Band, and Chairman Shai Neto from Tule River.

I want to thank Assembly Members and the Senators for joining us here today. Senator Cortese and Senator Dahle and Assemblymember Valencia.

And the order of presentations will be Chairman Sisco and then Mayor Mary Ann Carbone and then Chair Jack Potter and then Chair Valentin Lopez and then Chair Shine Nieto from Tule River. Go ahead. When you're ready.

Good morning, everyone. Chair Ramos, Chair Vidian, legislative staff, legislators. Where do I begin. First of all, thank you for showing the same passion as we do in this very, let's say, delicate issue and that we hold very dear to our heart, especially with our ancestors. Our ancestor remains and their belongings were held without consent. Okay.

Now, the idea that I have. The thing I have issue with is, okay, they were taken without consent. How can they be given back without consent. You know, the tribes have to jump through hoops to get what they need. Not just in this issue, but it seems like in every issue that it seems to.

The issues seem to be ignored when it comes to our issues. You know, we here because this is important for us, because this is a step, the first step in healing for our tribes. And I heard the comment that tribes are busy and they don't have time. Well, last time, this is a priority for us.

There's no excuse. And just to be mindful, from our experience as tribal leaders, if you give us a date of 2028 and guess what, we're going to hold you to those dates because we have people that we have to answer to and the apologies, we've heard them an enormous amount of times.

I think the only apology that should be given is the transparency and the truth that's given to our tribal people. This is not a way to honor our people, our ancestors.

Hearing the testimony today from the audits, this is the third audit. And my concern is that should the fourth audit come, and we're still in the same place, where does that leave us. And that's a question that, it's up in the air. You know, nobody can give a clear answer here today without the specific.

Not be able to give the specifics of what was asked today. And that is very concerning for us as tribal people because we're very transparent in what we do with everything that we do with our people, because that's the only way that be able to conduct business.

To be able to have those answers here today will make our lives a lot easier when it comes to the healing process. Another concern is that the people that are watching, the youth, the youth are watching. The stories that were taken away from us many years ago, we can't get those back.

But what we can do is the stories that are being given today, we with the passion and the wherewithal to sit here today before you and have this discussion once again. And we appreciate the hearings that come to bring it, to bring this to light.

And the thing is that the issues that with the UC system, in essence, they just don't make it a priority. And that's me speaking from the heart because, you know, the experts are our tribes. We are the experts. When we go in, when we go and see these objects, some of our ancestry remains. We know, we know.

We don't, we are the experts, we can go in there and tell them exactly where they were at, the villages the ancestral, the remains of the territories that were in. They have it documented in all their paperwork. When I testified in 2019, I believe it was UC Berkeley.

When I testified, they said they found remains 12 miles from our Yokuts village of Santa Rosa Rancheria. Now, you mean to tell me that we're going to sit there and have to prove that's not. That's our ancestral remains, and we know that's the village. And personally, it was the village of my great grandfather. So if we get.

If, you know, we're very passionate about this, I cannot speak enough on how. This is nonsense, man. There is no other way to put it. And again, we honor our ancestors because they need to be treated with dignity and respect. They're sitting in boxes, they're tagged, they're in storage.

Why not have, when we have the most likely descent, MLD's reach out to the tribes, Berkeley, San Diego, that's the way you're going to get the answers. I hear that they have to have special skills. We are those special skills.

And we will continue to fight until every single one of our ancestors is home and every one of their belongings is home. So you're going to hear us till the dawn of time make sure that ancestors get home.

And it's very much appreciated to see these other tribal leaders here and to the level of disrespect given to say that we don't have the time. You know, the ancestors, we stand on the shoulders of our ancestors. We value our elders, we value the stories. Everything that's given, we are here because of them.

So us as tribal leaders, we want to create those stories here with you. We want to work as a team with the UC system. We want to be able to create something that later on down the line, when we're long gone, that other people can talk about.

You know, this is what happened, and this is how we resolved it. You know, we're not here to be confrontational. We're here to work together to get to what we where we need to go. And Senator Ramos, we appreciate all the work that you do and and thank you for having this hearing today. Appreciate you.

Thank you. Chairman Sisco from Tachi Yokuts Tribe. Next we go to Mary Ann Carbone, Mayor Sand City and Vitrina Chumash.

Thank you Assemblymember Ramos. As I sit here today as an elected official and a California Native leader from an urban community where according to the CSU Monterey Bay, there are at least six non federally recognized tribes.

As we do with land acknowledgments out of respect, I will name them: the Amah Mutsun Tribal Band, the Costanoan Rumsen Carmel Tribe, the Esselen Tribe of Monterey County, Indian Canyon Mutsun Band of Costanoan Ohlone, Ohlone Costanoan Esselen Nation, and the Ohlone/Salinan Tribe.

I believe it's important for me to recognize these tribes and that they are recognized by the State of California and the communities. My focus here to the Select Audit Committee will be on the challenges facing our federally unrecognized tribes.

According to California Department of Housing and Community Development, There are over 55 no-federally recognized tribes in addition to the 109 federally recognized tribes.

In fact, federally recognized unrecognized tribes represent a significant portion of the state Native American population and face unique challenges as federally recognized tribes do not have, such as the complex history with Some currently unrecognized tribes have been terminated from federal recognition in the 1950s, while others have never received recognition.

My question is, given the passing current efforts to implement NAGPRA and CalNAGPRA, can UC campuses list out the federally unrecognized tribes, their localities, and their communication, and establish relationships with those tribes. Also, campuses must now revise their NAGPRA mandates to approach federally unrecognized tribes in the following ways.

Through consultation with unrecognized tribes, the CalNAGPRA requires that campuses to inform these tribes of the burial remains and related cultural objects they possess and in the process to determine whether a particular tribe might or might not be affiliated with the particular burial remains and objects.

It is for the campuses to initiate communications around this process, to make first calls send out, first invitations to consultation meetings, not the other way around.

According to this audit, too many tribes are complaining that they have never been contacted and have no idea that there might be cultural artifacts and possible bones of their ancestors lying around in some University basement or even more suspect storage environments. How will the campuses respond to this failure in communication.

In keeping with new federal guidelines and attempting to meet the challenges posed by the new restrictive CalNAGPRA guidelines when it comes to federally unrecognized tribes, campuses are now encouraging these tribes to partner with federally recognized tribes to submit joint repreation requests. Which is easier said than done and it shows a certain lack of awareness.

I'm not saying it can't be done, but there's going to be a lot of groundwork. There has been for a very long time a level of contradiction, suspicion and resource competitive dynamics in the cultural and political landscape that is in California Indian country.

This has been experienced in various ways by many federal and unrecognized tribes and for one instant noted in the audit on page 48. It illustrates this clearly and I believe it might be broadly representative. Another question is in the case of the campuses receiving a joint reparation request from partnering recognized and unrecognized tribes.

Considering the potential conflicts and relational stumbling blocks mentioned by both audit and in my personal experience, what will the campuses approach be through mediation and possible interventions to ensure a successful outcome to the repatriation process for partnering tribes.

In closing remarks it's been honored to be invited to sit here with the Select Committee and my fellow Committee Members and to represent the unrecognized tribes in my locality. I thank the representatives of the University of California for their responses today.

And despite the disappointing results of the 2025 audit the stated and intentions to comply with audits recommendations and increase their awareness to improve ultimately become fully CalNAGPRA compliant with accountability for first and foremost to the native California tribes, both recognized and unrecognized. Please bring our ancestors home. Thank you.

Thank you so much for your presentation. As now we'll move to Chairman Jack Potter ready.

Thank you Assemblymember Ramos and thank you to all the other elected leaders up there. I'm going to ask if I could have the people from the previous panel to come up here and stand in front of me. I want you to hear me. My native sister. I know you have the ears so you could remain seated.

But the other three I'd like you to come before me.

We'll allow it. You can sit in the chairs.

Go up there. Yeah. Thank you Assemblymember. So I'm not here to talk down at you. I want you to see my heart. I want to share an experience that I went through about a month ago. It was right before our ceremony.

I went to bed And I woke up so tired, even more tired than when I went to sleep, because I never got rest that night. As soon as I fell asleep, I began this journey and I traveled. And when I got there, there was this beautiful river. I could see my great auntie across the water.

She hollered, sister, here comes your boy. And I seen my grandma and I crossed that water. Never once in my dream has I ever went to that side. So that's why I know each day that I share on this side, I'm getting closer to go to that side, because I've never been allowed to go on that side.

My people have always came over here to visit me. I've never went over there to visit, so I don't know how much longer I have here, but I know I have clear instructions. And as I went over there, I seen the way it was. It's beautiful. And I cannot wait to get there.

But over here to the left, there was a bunch of dark shadows. And I couldn't understand it until you were speaking. Those dark shadows are our ancestors that are stuck on these shelves. They need to go back to that side, to that village. It was beautiful. I was sitting there and my aunt was working on these clothes.

It's like, what are you doing, Aunt. She said, my husband, she said, your uncle, he's almost here. She said, I hear him getting closer, and my uncle, her husband of 70 years, because she died about 20 years ago, about 9 months ago, he passed away.

And so she said, I'm preparing his clothes because when he gets over here, he can't be having nothing from the Alani, that's you visitors. So he had to leave his stuff on that side of the river once he gets there. And so when she said that, I tried to look down to see what I was wearing.

I couldn't see what I was wearing. But as I looked back and I looked across that river, could see my white man clothes over there. And so I don't know what I was wearing. Maybe I was just there in my birthday suit because maybe they knew it wasn't my time. So nobody was preparing my clothes.

And my grandma said, I'm so proud of you, all what you have done for the people. She said, and then my one uncle was over on the right, and he looked upset. And I was like, what's going on, Uncle? He said, I'm waiting for my granddaughter.

It's a few years before she comes, but I'm going to sit here and wait because she's been doing wrong to our people. She's forgotten what it is to have a heart for the people. She has become an Alani. She has forgotten our ways. And so before she's allowed over here to be with the village.

I've got a setter straight. I've got a corrector, he said, and I want to make sure I'm ready for that. And then I was introduced to my great grandmother. I've never seen her. And my great greats and on and on, all the way back.

And different ones came at me and they spoke to me and they said, when you go back over there. Give. A message to this person. And they gave me a word. I called up that relative and said, I had this thing last night happen to me.

But this person by the name of this Captain Yellowjacket, who's a Miwok Indian, gave me this word to tell you, Holaka tiwa, my relatives started crying. My great grandpa used to call me. That was my name. I don't have that personal knowledge. These people were gone before I was even alive.

And so I wonder, will I get to see the return of my people before I go over there, because I want to be accepted. I don't want to see those shadows. And I need you guys to hear me. And like you said, human remains by 2028, all those things are human remains.

Everything that our people has touched, we breathed life into their ornamentation, their tools. They all have a spirit. Everything is connected, not just this flesh and bone. Everything, every rock we've touched.

That's why my wife's people, when we're at the funerals, there's women that sprinkle water behind that body as it's being transported to make sure there's smooth transition. And everything that is put in that grave is part of them. You need that when you go on that side.

And so to hear there may be a separation because it's not a human remain, our people aren't going to get arrest. You must repatriate all those hundreds and hundreds of thousands of things right along with those human remains because that was given to them by their family.

When I bury my people, we put water in there because they thirst when they're traveling. It takes them a year to get over to that side. We put acorn meal in there with them, and all the things that they used in this life, they're going to need over there.

And so there can't be a separation from the remains and their artifacts, their items. It's all connected. Because I would hope when you buried your grandmother and that ring that was on her finger, if she was to be unearthed and you only got her bones back.

But that wedding ring that she cherished so much that she wanted with her stays on a shelf. Do you think she's gonna rest. No, she wants that back on her finger too. And so we have to put it all together. We've got to resend them back on their journey with everything that they were originally placed with.

And I ask you guys to please do that. I appreciate the 2028, but we've got to send those other artifacts back with them, if we are truly going to let them rest. And so I woke up that morning and my wife was like, I don't know what you were doing in your sleep.

She said you were talking your language. She said stuff I ain't never heard you say. She said, and you were just restless. And then there were times you would laugh. She said, and I was like, what's he doing.

And before I woke up, all my elders gathered and they said, you know, you guys have hard job ahead of you, but we know it's possible. And so now sitting back there during this hearing, I realized what those shadows were. Because as you were speaking, I seen my dream again.

And I seen those shadows get a little bit of color. And so I understand now that they were not just a shadow. Those are the ones that were interrupted in their rest and they've got to get back because there's a void in that village on that side of the world.

And so my grandpa always said, we've got a Doctor your minds. So I hope today, even though I do not have a degree or anything. I, as the Indian expert from my land, from my country, has doctored your mind. Thank you.

Thank you so much for your testimony. You can return back. And thank you so much to the UC's for being able to come up and sit up in front. As now we move to our next presenter, Valentin Lopez, chair of Amah Mutsun Tribal Band.

Thank you and good day. Assemblymember Ramos, Assembly Member Harabedian and other Members here today. My name is Valentin Lopez and I'm the chair of the Amah Mutsun Tribal Band.

Our traditional territories are south of Santa Cruz, down to the Elkhorn Slough, and inland to Gilroy, Hollister, Morgan Hill, south of Pinnacles, and then to the ridgeline of the Diablo Range. I first attempted repatriation with the Amah Mutsun. Our tribe first attempted repatriation with UC Berkeley in 2009, and we have worked continuously since that time.

And we yet to have any remains returned or have any hope of having remains returned. I'll talk a little bit about that. In the old days, I was also a Member of the Native American advisor to UCOP on issues related to NAGPRA. And I can tell you those early days were very hard, very difficult.

When I first joined there, I had people, you know, telling me, I don't belong there, talking about the science, how the remains are their property, how they own them, how they can do what they want with them. And they talked about that. Because we were federally recognized, they didn't have to deal with us.

I listened through a lot of those difficult conversations on that Committee. But I stated, I continue to fight, but I have worked continuously with them. I also worked to get repatriation, to attempt repatriation at UC Santa Cruz. Santa Cruz was much more cooperative and willing to work with our tribe than Berkeley was at that time.

And this is in the 2017-2019 period of time, believe it or not. We successfully got the remains of approximately 19, I believe it was ancestors returned to us from UC Santa Cruz. We went through the National NAGPRA.

We had a hearing in Fairbanks, Alaska in 2019, and we got the remains returned to us as a federally recognized tribe, not having to work with a federally recognized tribe. And that was important to us. We wanted our own identity. We wanted our own sovereignty.

We did not want to work with the federally recognized tribes, although you did have offers, and we appreciate those.

Mr. Potter told of a dream he recently had. I'd like to tell you of our perspective of our ancestors. When they pass, we say they pass through the other side of the ocean. And we believe—it's our belief—that when we...

Those remains are disturbed—we're calling their spirit back from the other side—and they cannot successfully return to the spirit world until they are fully and completely reburied with ceremony. So, this is a huge violation of our spiritual beliefs, by not having the remains of our ancestors return to us for that reburial.

You know, and I've said this many, many times—that this is the great... This is our number one priority of our tribe. And it's a huge violation of our spiritual beliefs, that we feel helpless to be able to do anything about it.

Universities—what's happening today is, whenever we issue a claim for remains, the University sends a letter out to all other tribes within our region to see if they have any comments on our claim. Well, inevitably, many tribes submit an opposition to our having the remains returned to us, because they say those remains should be returned to them.

And we have tribes who have, in our territory, Ohlone the Greater. We don't use the term "Ohlone." Ohlone is the tribe. Ohon was the tribe that was at Pescadero, and the Spanish started calling them "Ohoni"—and then it applied to everyone within the greater territory of Ohlone recognized today.

But whenever they send those letters out to the tribes, they say they want—you know—that they want the remains returned to them. And those tribes could be from San Francisco, Oakland, Monterey—it doesn't matter. As long as they set a claim, that claim stops.

And the University says we can't do anything about that until this—until the dispute is settled. We have offered all the other tribes that have ever submitted a letter of dispute. We have told them, "Let's work together, but let's rebury these together. You can hold your ceremony; we'll hold our ceremony."

The important thing is to have them reburied—not once as any other tribe taking them up for this. And I don't know why, but that's a huge roadblock for us. Now, we're being told that we can work with the federal tribes to get the remains returned to us.

Last year, in this hearing—I spoke at this hearing last year—there was a Chairwoman from another tribe. I won't mention the tribe. After she spoke, and after I spoke, I talked to her at the end of the hearing and asked her if she'd be willing to work with us on repatriation. She said yes.

I contacted—I sent messages to her at least 8-10 times—email, text messages through the office, and to her number directly. I did not get a return. I've made requests of other federally recognized tribes to work with us on repatriation, and I get no response.

I have been told by Members of the federally recognized tribes who sit on councils that federally recognized tribes will not work with us. They want nothing to do with unrecognized tribes. That's a huge block for us.

We have had two recognized tribes say they will work with us, but they must go through the same process the UC system does. They have to contact all the other tribes that are on that list to ask them if they have any say in what our—our claim is.

And once again, they jump all over that and say, "No, those are their remains," and they want those remains returned to them only—and they will not work with us. We offered—made the same offer. As I said, this is a huge violation of our spiritual belief. We want to get them reburied.

We'll work with the other tribes. The other tribes can offer us just about any terms, and we'd probably say yes if we can get those remains returned. But yet, we get no counteroffer whatsoever. We had two tribes that worked with us, as I said—and I'll mention them and give them thanks.

Wilton has offered to work with us, but then we had that same thing—where they send the claim out and all these other tribes jump in. And we had the same thing with the Chumash—the Santa, Santa Ines Chumash. They said that they would work with us, but they had the same issues there.

I want to say that what we have asked, something that has happened is that we were told in about 2018 or 2019 that the Native American Heritage Commission was going to come up with an arbitration process to determine which tribe those remains should be repatriated to. That process has never been developed.

And we were told for years that they're working on that arbitration process—just a couple years ago.

Now we're hearing that they're going to revise their criteria for being federally unrecognized, and that they should achieve the same thing—as the intent there was to get rid of a lot of the tribes that are on the list that are not legitimate tribes.

And let's be honest—on that Native American Heritage list, there are a lot of illegitimate tribes. For example, there's a tribe there that is comprised of a mother and daughter only—and that is a tribe. There was a tribe there that newly formed; there was no tribe prior to that. In 2021—January 2021—they became a tribe.

And now they're being recognized as a continuous and historic tribe of their territory. But how can that possibly be, if they're continuous and historic? And by the way, that Chairwoman was a member of our tribe—going, you know, on our council back in the 1990s—and up until 2020, she was a member of our tribal council.

And now she drops—she resigns from our council. The next month, she starts a new tribe, and she's on the Native American Heritage list. How can that be? There's also a person there who... was... fraudulent in claiming to be a tribe.

The federal Office of Inspector General did an investigation of her, and they found fraud on her part—and she's still on the Native American Heritage list. How can that be, then?

Then as I kind of referred to earlier, there's a number of Pan Ohlone tribes who believe that they have the right to any remains that are Ohlone—anything recognized as Ohlone territory. So, these are just atrocious things that happen to us, that should not be allowed to happen to us.

There needs to be coordination between the UC system, the Native American Heritage Commission, and the national NAGPRA. There's so much conflict and differences there—they're just totally incompatible. In all honesty, we're here looking at that audit of UC Berkeley—of the UC system, rather—and I've been trying to work with them since 2009.

And I'm mad. Very, very upset. Very disappointed. But I don't blame them entirely, because I see all those other conflicts out there that make it impossible for them. And so, we're trying to deal with one process—the UC system. But we have to look at the bigger problem here. The bigger issues here.

Give me a second—I think, let me see if I have anything else before I go back. At one time, we heard...this will be my final point. Thank you for bearing with me. You know, now we—the federally unrecognized tribes—have to deal with federally recognized tribes, but the Federal Government wants nothing to do with us.

If we're not recognized by the government, why do they have any say over the remains of our ancestors? That's another huge conflict, and it should not be happening. If they don't have—if we're not recognized by the Federal Government—why do, they have any say about our ancestors?

We were told one time that, as a strategy, we should request that national NAGPRA just give the UC claims—just give the unrecognized tribes under NAGPRA—just give them, give it to the State and let the State make that determination. If we're federally unrecognized tribes, we should have nothing to do with the Federal Government.

Just give it to the State of California and let the State of California deal with it. But then, shortly after that, that's when the guidelines came out saying we have to work with federally recognized tribes. And we feel that was kind of like a sabotage issue for us. I'll stop there. Thank you very much.

Thank you so much for your testimony. Now we'll move to Chairman Shine Nieto from Tule River.

Tule River—home of the resilient Yokuts. I thank you, Mr. Ramos. Sir, Ramos—for allowing me to be here today to talk on behalf of my ancestors that are in cages, boxes, and institutions.

You know, I thank your allies also for sitting with you and being up there with you—with open minds and open hearts—to his people that come from the lands we come from. You know, the first peoples of California. You know, we sit here today, and we listen to...

Well, I—I—I can only speak for myself, but I know how my brothers feel, and how my sisters feel—those who sit with me, those who sit behind me, and those who sit at home. We’ve been going through this for years—30 years, 35 years—however you want to say it.

You know, I got kids that are probably going to have to take over for us sitting over here, you know, youngsters coming from our lands to take over the Paton that I took over, the staff that I took over, to bring this same battle to this same house, you know, it's been going on for years and years.

When does it stop? You know, and we heard the auditors. That's what I want to get back to. I mean, the audit don't lie.

People do, you know. And so, when we get to these auditors—you know, this is the third audit—it's pretty much the same, you know. And, you know, we got all these people that say different-wise than the audit, but the audits never lie, you know. So that's what I want to put down in my testimony: that, you know, we get back to what's real.

The audit's real, you know. Nothing has been changed. You know, the sir from Berkeley—you know, me and my colleague right here, as you should say, my brother of arms, Chairman Sisco from Tachi—we go to Berkeley. That's the first time I ever seen this sir from Berkeley.

I mean, we don't even get the respect, as leaders, for this guy to come into there and shake our hands and welcome us to his land that he calls his—that's, you know, his university. We speak to the staffers, you know. So how much respect are the tribes really getting to give our people back?

We hear about experts, you know. Who's the experts? We have all these excuses. Yeah, we're the experts. You give me that money that you give these universities for this—for this cause that they say they're trying to help us with. You give me that.

I could get all my cousins that have pickup trucks and fill up their gas tanks, and get the greatest singers from Tachi, from Chuck Chancey, from Big Sandy—on and on, you mean. And we'll sing them home. Those singers won't even need that money but to gas up my cousin's gas trucks and everybody else's gas trucks.

And we all got pickup trucks, 'cuz we're all mountain people. We could get them gone by 8/28/2005—25, you know. So, to say that they're trying to give us back our people? I—I don't think so. I mean, why is it taking so long? It's...

This is years now, you know—years turning to how many more years that our people had to sit there. Then another thing is, is that with that money, we could also have our own warehouses where we come from, in our lands. We're from Stockton to Tejon, mountain range to mountain range.

Before pre-contact, 3 million of us. Now we're down to thousands. We got as much people alive as we do in these universities. So, when does our people get to come home? When do we make it happen? You know—it's simple.

They already got stuff boxed up in cake boxes this big—of items that Mr. Potter speaks of, you know—that need to go back with our people, you know. And with money, that if the state gave us that money, we could rent the warehouses back home in our lands, you know, and put the same—how they have our baskets stored in a warehouse.

We could have the same warehouse. It's not that hard. It's simple things, but they make it difficult—in my mind, in my opinion. So, you know, we sit here and we sit here, you know. We hear the apologies, you know. I don't want to hear your apology.

I could. I want to hear your welcome when I tell you thank you for releasing our people from your institution. Thank you for allowing us to get our people back. Thank you for allowing our trucks—our semis—to come in here and take our people home, you know. But it's never that.

It's always something—that, oh—we got to write this paper, we got to do this, we got to do that. You know, when—when do—when do—when do people have to comply with the law?

You know, we're—we're subject to the law every time. Us Native Americans, you know, and Yana people—we're—we're always subject to the law.

You know, we can't come in here and just—you know, yesterday we had to have a pass to get into a building that's supposed to be all of ours. You know, and we sit here, coming here again—once again—who takes my place? Who takes Chairman Sisco's place? And who takes Potter's place?

You know, when does it stop? When do we have to stop spending our ancestral money just to come get our ancestors? You know, we could be using this for our youth and our elders—and all the departments we have to pay for—because the state won't give, give us the money to pay for these.

But these universities—you know, we got a university that we all care about in the Valley: Fresno State. You know, we're all Bulldog fans at heart, because that's the main show in—in our land.

But President Sandoval has no—no—no hold back on nothing of ours, our people. You know, so he works with us. He invites us to his mansion—that's that. He took over to have conversations with tribal leaders. He shakes our hand like we're human beings, you know.

So, I appreciate President Sandoval, and I just want to say his name because I appreciate his efforts to give our people back, and to give our artifacts back, and to give their items back. So, like Mr. Potter said—so that can go home with them and put back.

You know, I sit here and try not to be upset or feel sickening, or hear these people speak. And I don't want to down them too much, but like—you know—when does the excuses stop? You know, when did the apology stop? My grandma used to tell me, “Only sorry people are sorry, grandson. Don't ever be sorry.”

You know what I mean? Always take what you do and make sure you fix it. But you should never say sorry, because only sorry people are sorry. That's why I don't like to hear sorry's. And so—when are you going to say you're welcome? When are you going to say you're welcome?

After I tell you thank you for giving my people back—my ancestors need to go home. All our ancestors need to go home. You know, and we need to find a way to do that.

And if we have to rent our own warehouses to bring them home—to where they can be close to home—before we put them back into the grounds that maybe Tachi don't have, or maybe Chuck Chansey don't have, or maybe Big Sandy don't have. You know, Tule River has the land—you know—but maybe these others don't, because of what was done to them more than us. You know, but we're ready to bring our people home and put them in the same warehouses they got them in, until we can bury them.

So, you know—excuses, excuse—but we're tired of them already. So, I just want to end on that, and I thank you for allowing me to be here today. Oh...

Thank you so much for tribal leaders' testimony in response to the different panels here today. Bringing it back to the dais—any comments from the dais, Assemblymember Valencia?

Thank you, Mr. Chair. Good morning still to everyone. Chairman Sisko—just want to acknowledge your perspective and experience thus far when it comes to the coordination and communication with these institutions. Chairman Nieto, as well—appreciate your candid remarks and experiences.

All of you, thank you for coming here today and expressing the frustration that has gone on for 35 years—unacceptable, in my opinion. And one thing that I would like—that we can all walk away from today—is to figure out this chain of communication.

On one end, we're hearing that the communication is there—best effort has been put forth to address this very challenging and critical issue—while on the other side, we're hearing that that is not what is being perceived and experienced. So, my hope is that the commitment from the UCS can be that today, moving forward.

I appreciate the commitment of 2028. I do agree that there needs to be some sort of metric in place that provides updates from now until then, to ensure that we are meeting that 2028 commitment. But again, in addition to that, I would like that the communication factor be improved.

And I think that's a critical—a critical, critical—step needed to ensure that we get to where we need to be by 2020. Thank you.

Thank you so much. Assembly Member Garcia.

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I just want to thank everybody here for their testimony. Um, I do want to address a question to Chairman Nieto. You did describe and characterize your relationship with the UC Berkeley, and I want to share here the recommendation number three from the audit.

It says the Office of the President should ensure that searches are unfettered and performed by NAGPRA staff, and other qualified individuals they identify as necessary to assist them.

And so, I wanted to know—what was kind of the outreach to everyone? Address, actually, the question: everyone, your knowledge of the outreach to the tribes, as by the auditors, as to how tribes can be involved in this process.

Well, like I said about President Sandoval from Fresno State University, he's hired one of our own Yokuts members from Tule River, and she's been working with all the students there that are Native Americans. And uh, they've been putting together everything, going through everything, so everything's traditional and cultural—from our lands and our people.

They don't have no non's working with them, so they're more understanding, and they know what they want to do to get back the things that we need to get back into the ground.

But it don't take that much time for the top leader from the University to say that's a good thing to do, and—and give back the push. Especially, you know, we don't even have to—he don't even have to—talk about the law. He—he's, he's, he's—he is the law.

So he's—he's—he's saying, "I got the right to do this, so I'm gonna give it to you because it's yours." I—I don't wanna—I don't want to have to have it on here because it's—it's not ours. So take it home. Take your people home. Take everything that belongs to them home.

And so that's what I like about that person, because, you know, to me, that's a human being—and that's all we're trying to be, you know. And we're usually treated lesser than animals, and that's why we're on reservations and rancherias, you know. But we're colonized to stand up now.

I mean, you want us to be colonized—here we are. Now give us our people back, because we want to take them home.

Thank you. Chairman yet though. Just kind of a follow up. But was there any outreach to the tribes to be on how to get them involved in this process of repatriation by the auditors, if you're aware of anything?

Nope, I have no awareness of that.

Okay, thank you.

Yeah, we're not aware of that. But just a quick comment.

It was the same meeting with Chair Nieto, and I think that UC Berkeley and other UC systems can take a page out of President Sandoval's book—because he took the initiative and showed the respect to us, as tribal leaders, that there ancestors are not possessions, and they shouldn't take ownership—and neither should we.

So, it would be a good idea for all the UC and CSUs, as well, to take a page out of President Sandoval's book—and do the same thing.

Thank you so much, Chair Harabedian.

Thank you, Mr. Chair. Just want to thank you again today for holding this hearing. I want to thank the tribal leaders for being here. All of your testimony was heartfelt, very moving for me personally to hear it.

And I know that everyone in the audience appreciates all of your perspectives, and I think it helps all of us understand this better. I want to thank the University of California, all the representatives that were here today, and I appreciate the commitments that were made here today.

I think that's very important to note what was said, and your commitments to follow up and adhere to NAGPRA—and make sure that, going forward, we are actually fulfilling the audit—the audit's recommendations. And I want to assure you, and everyone here today, that this is not going to fall off our radar.

This is going to be a priority for us, and we want to see progress going forward—on a quarterly basis, on a yearly basis—and we will make sure that we are checking in on that. I assure you that the Joint Legislative Audit Committee, under my chairmanship, will continue to make this a priority.

I know that the Select Committee under Chair Ramos and his leadership will also make this a priority. But we want to see this done in short order. We want to see it done—again—in consultation with tribal leaders.

We've heard a lot of diverse opinions here today on some of the stumbling blocks that have happened—some of the barriers. We want to make sure that we actually overcome those and address those. But today is an important day, because we are one step closer to getting to where we need to go.

And I think that one way we can honor those—those who we are talking about today, the remains and the—the ancestral antiquities that are at stake—is to make sure that there is transparency, to make sure that everyone is actually speaking from the same set of facts and using the same evidence.

And I think that this hearing helps us do that. These audits help us do that. And I think we are here just because we want to honor and respect the traditions of our First Nations—our Native people. And I think that we have a long way to go. All of us need to work together in doing that.

And I assure you that you'll have my personal commitment, and you'll have everyone up here—all of my colleagues up here—who would give you that same commitment. So, thank you again to Mr. Chairman for doing this, and I appreciate all your work.

Well, thank you, Chairman Harabedian, for your comments, and those on the dais for your comments to this really important issue. To California's First People, Native Hawaiians, and all those remains that still are in the archives, we do want to address a couple things that were mentioned.

Tribal knowledge as being a criteria for repatriation—and to the comment from one of the chairs, saying that that was nonsense—because when those remains were dug up, there was no consent given.

So maybe we need to start looking at not making it harder, through regulation, to repatriate—but start to look at making it easier, with the tribal knowledge that's there. We have ran several bills to equate tribal knowledge to those museum directors that are in those archives.

But I wanted to bring that up, because it truly is a comment that I think needs to resonate—that consent, now, with the criteria that's there, sending out notices. But yet, those remains didn't ask to be dug up. But yet, they've been in storage for many years now.

And so, we need to look at a process that speeds up that process ourselves and identifying barriers that are out there—not just on the UC side, but also within the tribal community in the State of California and the nation—to ensure that we are working together.

Because the sole purpose is to make sure that those remains get back into the ground for proper reburial. That's the number one issue as a cultural person from our area. And here's to make sure those remains get back into the ground—and looking at a process that's there, and again, regurgitating that.

They didn't ask to get dug up. They weren't asked affiliation when it was there. It was colonization that forced that to happen. And what we're dealing with here—and some of the testimony that we're hearing from tribal leaders—goes back to the very premise of colonization: conquer and divide. And that's what they're continuing to do.

But yet, what's being held hostage are our ancestors in those archives—in the UCs, Cal States, and even community colleges. And we are going to look into those areas, the state agencies, making sure you do have the authority to start those repatriation processes moving forward.

That's what these hearings bring out—a lot of the barriers that are there. So, we want to make sure that we hear that. And Chairman Ahmad Muttsin, you're in an area that has been there for some time. Colonization did take place.

They didn't recognize tribes there. But yet, a recognition from a government that annihilated our people—shot and killed our people—and yet said, "Now I'll give you recognition." But those that were dug up didn't ask for consent. They didn't ask. They were dug up—and are now being held in archives.

We can't no longer move forward on the colonizational part. That's why we have to be able to come to terms and identify barriers in Indian Country, as well as barriers at the UC system—to make sure that we're expediting the remains back to the rightful people for proper reburial.

And so, I do want to mention, we heard the testimony from those here. And there is a process that we have to move forward on. There is a process that, every time we move forward in statute, it starts to build more criteria.

But maybe what we need to do is lessen that criteria—to ensure that we could all agree, at least here in the State of California—that the number one issue is to get those remains back into the ground, and working together on that process moving forward. Again, these are issues that we're grappling with in 2025.

35 years ago, the laws moved forward for repatriation, but we're still grappling with those issues in 2025. I believe that the issues we're still grappling with today are before us because of the colonizational process that was taken against our people—back before the state even became a state—when the first Governor put out bounties on our people.

That type of—that part of—history still needs to come forward as being a barrier to repatriation of all those remains that are there. I don't believe we should make it harder.

I think we should make it easier to get those remains back into the ground—at least the remains that are in the archives of the UCs, Cal States, and community colleges.

We have to make sure that we move forward and get those remains back into the ground and then start developing policy—moving forward as the UCs are moving forward and looking into the field schools—and making sure they have the blessing of the local tribes before they move forward on any curatorial digging going on throughout the State of California.

We're looking forward to seeing that policy move forward, but also to the UCs being able to put out a date—2028—of where you want to move forward in compliance with1q the remains that are in your archives.

But as Chairman Potter so eloquently put, a lot of those remains are tied with burial goods that are there with them—beads, different things that are there—that we need to be taking a look at to make sure that, if we're complying, we're not hastily now trying to make up for 35 years; that we're overstepping things that need to be with the individual as they continue to move forward and complete their journey.

As others have commented on, this body has heard the testimony. We are going to look together at the recommendations from the Auditor, and we are going to take into consideration the process that tribal leaders and others have brought up before us. Assemblymember Garcia—the audit.

The Auditor's purpose is to audit regulations and statute that has moved forward. So, the component of the Auditor reaching out to tribes for repatriation—that's a separate process. The Auditor has done a great job: three audits on this topic and several pieces of legislation that continue to move forward, making sure that tribal knowledge is at the forefront.

And I still believe that that needs to be there. But I do deeply believe that we're dealing with repatriation—we're dealing with items that are in the facilities of the UCs, the Cal States, and community colleges—that were brought on through colonization: dividing, conquering, dividing our people, and pitting one against another.

It's time that we unite through legislation—now that we're here and through a body—to ensure that the number one goal is a repatriation of all those remains that are in the archives in the State of California. And we'll continue to work hard on that.

And I just want to thank all the presenters for coming forward, and we continue to look forward to working together on bringing resolve to these issues.

The date 2028 is something that we're going to keep in mind, and we're going to keep working with the UCs to see how we could get to the pillars of education there—to put out that repatriation is one of the pillars of the UCs—and we'll continue to work on these areas.