A list of the remains was recently completed and sent to a half-dozen native Hawaiian groups, including the Office of Hawaiian Affairs, as part of a national effort to repatriate the remains of native Americans.

Nationally, the list includes 4,982 remains from 100 parks, according to the National Park Service. In Hawaii, the remains are from Haleakala and Hawaii Volcanoes national parks. They include the bones of a minimum of 26 native Hawaiians, said Robert Hommon, Pacific Island

System Support Office archaeologist for the Park Service in Hawaii.

"This is very significant," said Lani Maa Lapilio, legal counsel for the Native Hawaiian Historic Preservation Council. Native Hawaiians believe that if a person is not returned to the Earth, "the cycle of life is not complete," she said.

"We've been very aggressive in trying to get these (remains) back.

"Hopefully, now that all known remains have been identified, these can all be taken care of."

The Park Service inventory is the latest step in a five-year federal process to return to the appropriate ancestors or caretakers the remains of Native Americans and Hawaiians.

"There was lot of hostility from Native American groups to the process," said Dr. C. Timothy McKeown, the archaeologist coordinating the inventory. He explained that when the bodies of Anglos and Africans were found, they were returned to their ancestors. But when the bodies of Native Americans were dug up, "they were put in museums."

In 1990, Congress passed the Native American Graves Protection and Repatriation Act, which required federal agencies and institutions to inventory their Native American remains.

The lists were then sent to appropriate Native American organizations. They could then claim the remains and, in most cases, give them a proper burial.

At the urging of Sen. Daniel Inouye, the repatriation act included native Hawaiians.

Federal museums already have inventoried their remains, and most of the native Hawaiian remains already have been repatriated. Among the museums that had remains, said McKeown, were some as far away as Massachusetts and Dartmouth College.

The listing, completed last month, is one of the last steps in the process.

"This levels the playing field," said McKeown.

"Now Native Americans and Hawaiians know what we have and can begin to decide which is the most appropriate organization to take care of them."

Lapilio said that so far, whenever native Hawaiian remains have been identified and made available, they have been repatriated by local groups. "The ideal is to get it back to exactly where it came from," she said. "If not exactly, at least the right island."

Haleakala National Park Superintendent Don Reeser said most of the bones from his park were dug up by archaeologists several decades ago and are kept by the Bishop Museum.

"We're talking to the burial councils," said Reeser. "We're getting information on what they want to do with (the remains)."