A new regulation is prompting universities and institutions to take action regarding "culturally unidentifiable" remains in their collections.

The rule was finalized in 2010, some 20 years after the Native American Graves Protection and Repatriation Act became law. It affects ancestral remains that haven't been conclusively linked to a specific tribal group.

“This isn’t stuff. You don’t do this to people,” Louis Guassac of the Kumeyaay Nation Cultural Repatriation Committee told the Associated Press. “I don’t care how long they’ve been there. You respect them.”

The Kumeyaay Nation will be able to rebury some of its ancestors that were being held by the University of California at Berkeley. The remains, which date back nearly 10,000 years, were found in Kumeyaay territory.

The Pea­body Museum at Harvard University has hired additional staff to respond to the new rule, the repatriation coordinator told the AP. The University of Michigan plans to return most of the 1,580 "culturally unidentifiable" ancestors at the school to 13 tribes.

An estimated 160,000 remains nationwide could be affected by the rule.

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Tribes retrieving ancestral remains (AP 1/17)