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Native American remains to be returned to tribe

Human remains that long have been in the Lake County Discovery Museum's collection will be delivered to a Native American tribe under a plan approved Tuesday.

The remains and related funerary objects will be given to the Michigan-based Pokagon Band of Potawatomi. The Potawatomi have lived throughout the Great Lakes region, including northern Illinois, for centuries.

The Lake County Forest Preserve District board, which oversees the Discovery Museum's operation, approved the deal during its monthly meeting in Waukegan.

The artifacts belonged to 34 people and have been in protective storage at the museum, which until recently was in Wauconda but is closed pending a relocation to Libertyville.

Once delivered, the remains will be ceremoniously reburied.

"We're happy that the remains will go to where they belong and receive the proper respect," board President Ann B. Maine said.

The remains of at least 11 other Native Americans are in the district's collection, but their heritage isn't clear. District officials are negotiating the transfer of those remains to the Sault Ste. Marie tribe of Chippewa Indians, which has offered to care for them. That tribe also is based in Michigan.

All the artifacts were part of the Discovery Museum's original collection. They were donated to Lake County in the late 1950s or early 1960s from the privately owned Lake County Museum of History, and ownership transferred to the forest district in 1989.

The remains and objects were on display until the 1990 adoption of the Native American Graves Protection and Repatriation Act. That law requires agencies and institutions that receive federal funding to return Native American cultural items to lineal descendants or culturally affiliated tribes.

Officials have worked for years to find them a more appropriate home.

"I'm so pleased that we are able to return the remains of their ancestors to the Pokagon Band for repatriation," said Nan Buckardt, the district's education director. "It is the right thing to do."

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