Kennewick Man

Discovery and Disputed Claims

Kennewick Man's near-complete skeleton had washed into the riverbed from a nearby eroding bank. The remains were examined by Dr. James Chatters, a local anthropologist, who initially described the morphology of the bones as that of a Caucasian middle-aged male. Although Chatters initially considered the skeleton to be that of an early pioneer, a stone spearpoint lodged in the pelvis caused Chatters to order further analysis, which revealed an age of over 9,000 years.

Because the skeleton was discovered in a navigable waterway, it came under the jurisdiction of the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, a federal agency subject to federal laws and regulations. Upon announcement of the find, several Native American tribes laid claim to the bones on the basis of shared ancestry, under the Native American Graves Protection and Repatriation Act of 1990 (NAGPRA). This federal law allows for a claim of repatriation of Native American remains to affiliated tribes. Among the many bases for such a claim is a showing that the claimant tribes historically occupied the area in which the remains were found.

Because of the age and location of the Kennewick Man, the Corps decided that the claimant tribes were indeed affiliated with the remains and so repatriation for reburial at an undisclosed location would be proper. The claimant tribes included the Yakima Nation, the Nez Perce, and the Confederated Tribes of the Umatilla Indian Reservation.

Before the Corps could return the remains, however, a group of eight forensic scientists filed suit in federal court disputing whether the skeleton was indeed Native American. They sought an injunction of the repatriation of Kennewick Man until they could first study the bones. Ancient human remains of the age of Kennewick Man are very rare in North America, and paleoanthropologists consider them to be source material that opens a window into prehistory on the continent. From the perspective of the scientific community, the loss of even one of these scarce skeletons to a secret burial place is tantamount to losing a critical volume that completes a larger collection telling the vital story of the human narrative.

Obversely, the Native American community places a larger emphasis on continuity of respect for the dead and the undisrupted spiritual narrative of the tribe. Moreover, many Native American religions and faiths are based on tenets holding that they were the original people of this continent and have always been here. Thus, ancient human remains discovered in North America are by definition Native American and should be considered revered ancestors of present-day Native Americans. Scientific discoveries proving that non-Native-American peoples might have predated Native Americans in the Western Hemisphere would run directly counter to such beliefs. The views of [Page 802]Native Americans are given far greater legal weight in NAGPRA than those of the scientific community. Consequently, a strict application of the law would have resulted in repatriation and reburial.

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