Senate Bill Could Untie Kennewick Man Bones

Tricity Herald ^ | 10-4-2007 | Annette Cary

[blam]

Senate bill could untie Kennewick Man bones

Published Thursday, October 4th, 2007

By Annette Cary, Herald staff writer

A Senate committee has approved a bill that could clear the way for Native Americans to claim the ancient bones of Kennewick Man.

This is the third time the change has been proposed to the Native American Graves Protection and Repatriation Act. It would ensure federally recognized tribes could claim ancient remains even if a direct link to a tribe can't be proven.

Tribes have pushed for a change to the law since the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in 2004 sided with scientists who said they should be allowed to study the 9,300-year-old remains because they could not be linked to any tribe.

Now tucked inside a bill that would allow tribal participation in methamphetamine grants -- among other changes -- is a two-word addition to the American Graves Protection and Repatriation Act. The act governs the control of Native American skeletons, requiring museums and federal agencies to return them to tribes if there is evidence that links the remains to the tribes.

The Senate bill would expand the definition of what remains are considered ancestral. It would add the words "or was" to a definition of Native American to say that when it comes to ancient remains, "Native American" refers to a member of a tribe or culture that "is or was" indigenous to the United States.

The current legislation is too new to have been considered by many of the tribes. But earlier this year the Affiliated Tribes of Northwest Indians passed a resolution at its annual conference asking that the language proposed in the bill be added to the law. The group represents more than 50 tribes.

Without the change, more than 100,000 remains currently held in museums or other collections no longer would be protected by the statue, Walter Echo-Hawk, an attorney with the Native American Rights Fund, said at a Senate Indian Affairs Committee hearing two years ago.

Tribes believe that any ancient remains in the United States are Native American and should not be studied without tribal approval.

Although an attempt to pass the changed definition failed two years ago, last week the same committee approved the bill unanimously by voice vote. Sen. Maria Cantwell, D-Wash., was among those in favor.

The bill was sponsored by Sen. Byron Dorgan, D-N.D., and co-sponsored by Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz.

But this time there was no public airing, said Cleone Hawkinson, a founding member of the Portland-based Friends of America's Past.

The new definition would assume that any remains found would belong to only federally recognized tribes, she said. That includes remains from small bands of people who died out and left no ancestors, and remains of indigenous ancestors to modern-day Latinos, including those who died just a couple of hundred years ago, she said.

"It narrows down and distorts history," she said.

Remains would automatically be turned over to tribes rather than requiring an ancestral link to be demonstrated first, she said.

"More than Kennewick Man is at stake," Friends of America's Past said in a message to members. "Unless this amendment is withdrawn, public access to the factual understanding of the nation's prehistory shifts to the exclusive control of federally recognized American Indians."

When the change to the law was last proposed, Rep. Doc Hastings, R-Wash., introduced counter legislation and he's expected to again.

The dispute dates to 1996 when two men stumbled upon a skeleton along the banks of the Columbia River while attending the Columbia Cup hydroplane races in Kennewick. The Army Corps of Engineers laid claim to the skeleton and planned to turn it over to local tribes. The Umatilla, Yakama, Nez Perce and Colville tribes wanted to bury the bones before they could be studied.

But scientists filed suit, insisting the remains, dubbed Kennewick Man, could not be linked to any of the tribes. Tests showed the skeleton was 9,300 years old, and some scientists suggested that rather than resembling Native Americans, the skeleton was more like the prehistoric Jomon of Japan or Polynesians or Caucasians.

w Annette Cary: 582-1533; acary@ tricityherald.com

[SunkenCiv]

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[Maynerd]

Spirit Cave Man is the spitting image of Shakespearean actor Patrick Stewart aka Jean Luc Picard of Star Trek fame.

[fish hawk]

Gee, to know that, you must be pretty old. Like several thousands. Of course this could be your “theory”, but then, you should present it as such.

[marsh2]

These relics are the history of all humanity. They should be available for all of us to learn to understand the evolution of humanoids and migration pattern of early man. They are our roots and should not be made inaccessible by relegating them to one tribe to which no direct lineage can be shown.

[Salamander]

“They don’t want you to know that they weren’t here first.”

They don’t want to lose all those tax-free casinos and tobacco franchise “reparations”, either.

Why do we even bother to seek “truth” any more?

Inevitably, somebody, somewhere who is “offended” by it will just hire lawyers to bury it.

More Blue Oyster Cult lyrics:

"I'm after rebellion; I'll settle for lies."

Pffffft.

[Varda]

Personally I think your theory that Native Americans aren’t related to the First Americans to be pretty far fetched (we are all still genetically related to ancestors whose morphology we don’t share) . However NAGPRA requires a direct cultural affiliation if you can’t prove a biological one. Changing that would be a racist move on the governments part and a disaster for real research.

[norton]

Local government turned my Great Grandfather’s sacred Irish grave site into a helicopter pad - damn fool should have stayed on Cherokee land.

[ZULU]

They or they may not be, but trying them to archaic pre-Columbian fossils is totally absurd. This is just another example of the melt-down of western civilization in the face of radical nativist types whose main agenda is not to protect their genuine immediate tribal ancestors, but to make a political statement.

Too bad we have so many gutless harlots in Congress but then most of them are Dems or RINOS so what can we expect.

[colorado tanker]

This is an idea so stupid, so anti-science and so anti-intellectual, but oh so politically correct, that it sounds like something Ward Churchill would support. Under the definition of this bill, even his whitebread bones could qualify as "native American" if they were old enough.

[49th]

On the one hand, it’s not difficult to understand the Native’s position on this issue, especially when one considers their religious beliefs regarding ancestors and how devastating it must be to know that, for all intents and purposes, their culture has been eradicated. An urge to cling to whatever they have left is entirely understandable, I’m sure most Americans would be livid at the idea of digging up Arlington Cemetery at any point in the future.

On the other hand, the advancement of scientific knowledge about the paleo-history of this continent is a good and worthy goal.

Ideally one would like to see a compromise situation whereby bones discovered would be paid whatever respects a tribe feels necessary, and then ‘loaned’ to an institution for study.

Also, I’m confused about how some people seem to feel that the fact that those people we call ‘Native Americans’ may not have been the first people here somehow lessens the tragedy of what happened to them.

[Docbarleypop]

I am so embarrassed that there is a picture of me getting my hand shaked by D.A. Dorgan when i was a teen.

[longtermmemmory]

This is PURE PAYOLA.

The Indians do not want to admit that their “claims” are tenuous. Since it now can be PROVEN the indians were not alone or here first then it is a threat to their casinos.

[ken21]

the united states is stuck on

stupid.

[Coyoteman]

The Indians do not want to admit that their “claims” are tenuous. Since it now can be PROVEN the indians were not alone or here first then it is a threat to their casinos.

I think I have to disagree with you on some of the science part of your post.

One of the oldest dated, and as far as I know, the oldest specimen to provide mtDNA from the New World is the individual from On Your Knees Cave in southern Alaska.

That find has been dated, I believe reliably, to about 10,300 years ago.

And the mtDNA of this individual has been found in 47 living individuals stretching from California to the tip of South America.

This suggests that, even though the earliest Americans may have been a different genotype, their descendants are clearly found throughout the Americas.

Here is a good link explaining a lot of the findings: Long in the tooth: Dental DNA reveals our ancient roots.

Since this two-year-old newspaper article, a journal article detailing the find has been peer-reviewed and published in the American Journal of Physical Anthropology 132(4):605-621.

Here are the details:

Genetic analysis of early holocene skeletal remains from Alaska and its implications for the settlement of the Americas, by Brian M. Kemp et al.

Abstract

Mitochondrial and Y-chromosome DNA were analyzed from 10,300-year-old human remains excavated from On Your Knees Cave on Prince of Wales Island, Alaska (Site 49-PET-408). This individual's mitochondrial DNA (mtDNA) represents the founder haplotype of an additional subhaplogroup of haplogroup D that was brought to the Americas, demonstrating that widely held assumptions about the genetic composition of the earliest Americans are incorrect. The amount of diversity that has accumulated in the subhaplogroup over the past 10,300 years suggests that previous calibrations of the mtDNA clock may have underestimated the rate of molecular evolution. If substantiated, the dates of events based on these previous estimates are too old, which may explain the discordance between inferences based on genetic and archaeological evidence regarding the timing of the settlement of the Americas. In addition, this individual's Y-chromosome belongs to haplogroup Q-M3*, placing a minimum date of 10,300 years ago for the emergence of this haplogroup.