Kennewick Man Battle Continues in Court
June 20 -- The battle between Indians and scientists over a 9,300-year-old skeleton is in court, again.
A U.S. magistrate in Portland, Ore., will hear oral arguments for the second day in the lawsuit brought by eight prominent anthropologists against the federal government over whether they can study Kennewick Man.
They say the skeleton, found in 1996 by college students near the banks of the Columbia River in Washington, doesn't resemble modern American Indians and could radically change theories about the earliest inhabitants of the Americas. Some scientists say Kennewick Man's bones most resemble those of modern people in East Asia.
But scientists may never have the opportunity for further study. In September, the Department of Interior ruled the skeleton should be turned over to five Northwest tribes who claim the skeleton as an ancestor and want to rebury it under a 1990 federal law. The Native American Graves Protection and Repatriation Act, or NAGPRA, was designed to give tribes power over Indian remains and artifacts held by museums or found on federal and Indian land.
Appeals Could Go Much Further
Named after a town near the Columbia River, the skeleton was found eroding out of the ground, and quickly became the focus of national attention when local anthropologists heralded the find.
Scientists have long theorized that people first came to North America around 12,000 years ago via a land bridge spanning what is now the Bering Strait. But more recent evidence suggests the history of the American continents may be more complex, and people may have arrived by other routes as well, or even by boat. Other archaeological finds in recent years in both North and South America also seem to support the more intricate theories.
Kennewick Man, some scientists now say, could be descended from early groups that came from Asia but died out and are not related to modern Indian groups.
NAGPRA requires tribes to file claims to show cultural affiliation to human remains. But the scientists say the skeleton is too ancient to link to any modern group and argue the law was never meant to govern ancient remains.
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