The National Park Service has removed the University of Central Arkansas from its database of institutions with Native American human remains.

The database previously said UCA reported the remains of at least two Native individuals to the federal government.

The listing was based on a July 27, 1995, letter from a professor in the former Department of Geography, Political Science and Sociology to the National Park Service, who reported she had been using two skulls for “classroom demonstration purposes.”

NPS administers the Native American Graves Protection and Repatriation Act program, which requires institutions that receive federal funds to return Native cultural items, including funerary objects, human remains and sacred objects to descendants or tribal nations.

In a March 30 letter to the National Park Service, President Houston Davis asked for the inventory to be changed.

“We believe that Dr. Elaine Fox most likely packed these materials and took them off campus with her when she retired from the university on May 15, 2007,” the letter said.

However, the former sociology and anthropology professor, now 76, said that isn’t what happened.

Fox reported to NPS having the skulls in 1995, but said after that, a government official suggested she ship them to an out-of-state address because they had no known origin.

Fox said, “I have no idea the address that I sent my skulls to, though I did get a letter some months later telling me they had received them, and they were Native American.

“When I did get the letter, I was surprised because I never thought I’d ever hear from them again.”

She believed the president’s office or her department had also received this letter of receipt, so she didn’t keep it.

“I do remember sending them out of state, and I was sorry to have to do that. I really liked using them as a teaching aid, but we had to comply with NAGPRA, and so we did,” Fox said. “It was a struggle.”

Fox said, “The president of UCA at the time appointed me to be the NAGPRA representative, and I actually did go to every single room in every single building, looking to see if I could identify any more patrimony, but I didn’t find anything.”

She said she used the skulls in anthropology 101 and also in a class she taught about Native American history, where students would pass them around.

Tom Dillard, the university’s first archives director, found the skulls in his first year on the job while Torreyson Library was being remodeled in 1986. NAGPRA passed in 1990.

“The University of Central Arkansas had accumulated some stuff for years that needed extra protection, so when I got there and started setting up UCA archives, of course, that was in my department,” Dillard, who left UCA in 1997, said.

He said the skulls were found on a shelf of what was called the Arkansas Room, and that “there was no documentation with them.” Dillard assumed they were donated, and he transferred them out of the archives.

“Someone thought UCA was an appropriate place for them, which, of course, it wasn’t. … There was no archaeological program on campus. They should have never taken them, but there was no one to say no,” Dillard said.

“I have not seen them since I gave them to Mrs. Fox. She was very professional,” Dillard said.

In March, the archives found in its manuscript collection a 1950s inventory of a campus museum, which listed “two skulls.”

In January 2023, ProPublica published “The Repatriation Project,” which supplemented the NPS databases by making the remains searchable by tribal affiliation, where available, and also by showing what percentage of remains the institutions have made available for return.

Using federal registry notices, ProPublica reported UCA had repatriated 0% of its remains, but Fox, who retired from UCA in 2007, said she complied as soon as she knew she had to.

The NAGPRA program sent two follow-up letters to UCA in 1995 and 2005, which Fox said she doesn’t remember. A NAGPRA program manager said the agency has no record of the university responding about the listing until March 2023, when archaeologist and UCA professor Duncan McKinnon reached out to ask about the inventory.