The Louvre Heist Went Viral. 90,000 Native Ancestors in Museums Didn’t.
Four days before the Louvre robbery captivated the internet, thieves stole over 1,000 Native American artifacts from an Oakland museum. The nation barely noticed. The disparity shows which stolen objects America considers worth recovering.
The Oakland Heist
On October 15, 2025, at approximately 3:30 a.m., thieves broke into an off-site storage facility belonging to the Oakland Museum of California. They took more than 1,000 artifacts, including Native American baskets, jewelry, ceremonial pieces, historical photographs, and carved ivory scrimshaw tusks.
Four days later, four thieves used a cherry picker to steal nine jewels worth $102 million from the Louvre in broad daylight. Within hours, the robbery dominated global news. France’s culture minister called it a “humiliation.” The museum director offered to resign. Arrests followed in eight days.
The Oakland theft produced a few local news segments. The story generated no viral hashtags and no global manhunt.
European art generates international concern. Native cultural property generates compliance forms.
The Legal Framework Museums Exploit
The disparity between responses to the Louvre and Oakland thefts reflects a larger problem. Over 90,000 Native American human remains sit in museum storage and university basements across the United States. Under federal law, institutions were supposed to return them decades ago. Most haven’t.
The Native American Graves Protection and Repatriation Act, passed in 1990, requires museums and universities receiving federal funding to inventory Native American human remains and funerary objects, then work with affiliated tribes to return them. NAGPRA established that these remains belong to descendant communities, not to the institutions that collected them.
Thirty-five years later, the law has produced extensive documentation but limited repatriation.
According to the National NAGPRA database, institutions have reported over 200,000 Native American human remains since 1990. That number represents people. Grandmothers and children. Warriors and healers. Removed from burial grounds, boxed, and stored in climate-controlled basements.
More than 90,000 remain unreturned. Alongside them: over 700,000 funerary objects, items buried with the dead, meant to accompany them into the next world. Sacred belongings reduced to inventory tags.
“NAGPRA compliance” often means paperwork filed and a notice posted in the Federal Register. It does not necessarily mean remains returned.
The Burden on Descendants
French authorities mobilized immediately after the Louvre robbery. Tribes requesting their ancestors back encounter years of administrative procedure.
Tribal Historic Preservation Officers spend years, sometimes decades, proving “cultural affiliation” under NAGPRA’s evidentiary standards. The burden of proof falls on descendants of the people who were removed from their graves.
Tribes hire lawyers and raise funds to file forms and travel for consultations. Some tribes have established entire repatriation departments with full-time staff working through federal regulations.
The costs add up. The Association on American Indian Affairs estimates that tribes spend hundreds of thousands of dollars on individual repatriation cases. Many tribes lack the resources to pursue claims at all.
Even after completing the process, institutions can refuse. Universities including UC Berkeley, Harvard, and the University of Oklahoma hold thousands of remains. Some have slow-walked repatriation for decades, citing ongoing research value or disputed affiliation.
According to testimony before the Senate Committee on Indian Affairs, repatriation officers have found ancestors in university labs, private collections, and in at least one documented case, stored on a private citizen’s kitchen counter.
The Smithsonian Exemption
NAGPRA does not apply to the Smithsonian Institution.
The Smithsonian operates under a separate 1989 law, the National Museum of the American Indian Act, which establishes different standards. The evidentiary threshold is higher. Institutional discretion is broader.
The Smithsonian holds at least 15,000 Native American human remains. Returning them is not mandatory under the same framework that governs other institutions.
In 2023, the Department of the Interior issued new NAGPRA regulations strengthening tribal authority and setting deadlines for institutional compliance. The Smithsonian remains exempt from these updates.
International Comparison
The pattern extends beyond U.S. borders. The British Museum holds eight million objects, including over 6,000 from Indigenous Australia, the Parthenon Marbles, and the Benin Bronzes.
The Gweagal shield, seized during Captain Cook’s first violent encounter with Aboriginal Australians in 1770, remains in London. The museum has responded to repatriation requests by offering to loan the shield back to Australia.
France has moved faster. President Macron announced the return of 26 objects to Benin in 2021 and proposed legislation requiring returns upon request from source countries.
The British Museum’s stated position: holding objects from around the world constitutes “preserving global heritage.”
Institutional Priorities
The response gap between the Louvre heist and the retention of Native remains shows which cultural property American and European institutions prioritize.
The Louvre will recover its jewels. They will return to display cases. The colonial origins of those objects will likely appear as a footnote, if mentioned at all.
The Oakland Museum may recover some artifacts. Many will likely disappear into the black market, where Native American cultural objects fetch significant prices with minimal provenance questions.
Native ancestors remain in institutional custody. The legal framework for their return exists. Implementation remains incomplete.
The treatment of Native remains in American institutions functions as what legal scholar Felix Cohen described: a measure of “the rise and fall in our democratic faith.”
Developments to Watch
The 2023 NAGPRA regulatory updates take full effect in 2024, requiring institutions to complete inventories and initiate consultation with tribes on a compressed timeline. Institutions that fail to comply face potential loss of federal funding.
Several tribes have active repatriation cases pending against major universities. Legal challenges to the new regulations are possible.
The Oakland theft remains under investigation. No arrests have been announced.
How to Get Invovled
Check the National NAGPRA database. It’s publicly accessible. Search for institutions near you and review what they hold.
Contact your local university or museum. Ask how many Native remains they hold, what their repatriation timeline is, and whether they’ve consulted with affiliated tribes.
Support tribal repatriation efforts. Organizations like the Association on American Indian Affairs accept donations to cover legal fees, travel, and ceremony costs.
If you work at an institution holding Native remains, I want to hear from you. What’s actually happening inside these compliance processes? Contact me directly with documentation.