The Saginaw Chippewa Tribe of Michigan is hosting a repatriation ceremony on Friday.

The tribe is reburying the remains of 11 ancestors. The ceremony will be held at the Nibokaan Cemetery.

"The teaching is, when we die, we put back in the ground the remains because we took a lot out of Mother Earth to live,” Charmaine Shawana, a tribal council member, told MLive. “We need to honor that, and give back what she gave us.”

Shawana and other tribal members will be traveling to Nebraska to reclaim the remains of two ancestors that were removed in 1883. Nine more remains that were removed as part of a highway project in May 2012 are also being repatriated from the Michigan Department of Transportation.

Get the Story:
Saginaw Chippewa Indian Tribe members to recover 19th century ancestors' remains from Nebraska (MLive 5/13)