U.s. Gives Pacific Tribes `Kennewick Man' Bones

September 26, 2000|By Michael Kilian, Washington Bureau.

WASHINGTON — The bones of the 9,000-year-old Kennewick Man will be turned over to the five Pacific Northwest Indian tribes who have long sought them, Interior Secretary Bruce Babbitt ruled Monday.

The controversial decision, which he described as "a close call," was a major defeat for the American scientific community, which had argued that the skeletal remains should be used to add to knowledge about early human life in this hemisphere.

"This is a unique case on so many levels," Babbitt said. "After evaluating this complex situation, I believe that it is reasonable to determine that the Kennewick Man remains should be transferred to the tribes that have jointly claimed him, tribes that have inhabited, hunted and fished this area ... for millennia."

He cited oral histories and other circumstantial evidence indicating that ancestors of the five tribes were living and hunting in the Pacific Northwest area at the time Kennewick Man died.

DNA tests seeking to determine whether the bones were those of an Indian proved inconclusive because they were too old to provide adequate DNA for examination, Babbitt said.

After several thousand years, bone matter mineralizes and "turns to stone," greatly diminishing the amount of recoverable and examinable DNA material, said National Park Service spokeswoman Stephanie Hanna.

Among the oldest ever found on the North American continent, the bones were unearthed in July 1996 during an excavation project along the Columbia River near Kennewick, Wash.

A spear point was found in a hip section of the skeleton, indicating the man had been wounded in his teens and lived another 20 to 25 years.

The wound and his recovery were strong indications the man was cared for by friends or relatives in some sort of community.

Radiocarbon dating determined the remains were more than 9,000 years old.

Shortly after the Kennewick discovery, the Nez Perce, Yakima, Colville, Wanapum and Umatilla Pacific Northwest Indian tribal groups laid claim to the remains under the provisions of the 1990 Native American Graves Protection and Repatriation Act.

The law was passed to protect Indian burial sites and funereal objects from tampering, theft and desecration.

It also requires the return of Native American bones and objects acquired by the Smithsonian Institution and other museums across the country during the late 19th and early 20th Centuries.

Thousands of bones and funeral relics from museum collections have been returned to various tribes since the law took effect, including artifacts from the famous Wounded Knee Massacre.

Asserting that Kennewick Man should not be presumed to have been an Indian, given the many scientific theories about the origins of human life in the Western Hemisphere, eight anthropologists filed suit to block the return of the bones until DNA testing could be done. Federal courts allowed the testing to proceed.

The anthropologists raised fears that, if the Indians prevailed, tribal groups throughout the country would use the law to seize all skeletal remains and artifacts predating European settlement of the Western hemisphere.

"It means the future of archeology on this continent," Hanna said.

Despite protests from the tribes, the Interior Department proceeded with DNA testing last spring. The agency also formed a panel of scientific experts to study Kennewick Man's probable living habits and circumstances.

"Although ambiguities in the data made this a close call, I was persuaded by the geographic data and oral histories of the five tribes that collectively assert they are the descendants of people who have been in the region of the Upper Columbia Plateau for a very long time," Babbitt said.

He noted that the federal Indian Claims Commission had concluded that the land where the bones were found was the aboriginal homeland of ancestors of some of the five tribes claiming the remains.

Technically under the control of the Army Corps of Engineers, the bones have been kept by Seattle's Burke Museum of Natural and Cultural History.