The “reasons” given for this action are so bogus, that I am without words. The main reason seems to be that the local tribes say that they always lived there, so the remains must belong to one of their own tribes.
Three points.
One: the morphology of the skull is that of a southeast asian, not a northeast asian. (All modern native americans are closest to northeast asian peoples in structure. Southeast and northeast asians are quite different from each other.)
Two: 9000 years? Give me a break. 2000 years would be pushing it for retention of historical events. Stonehenge is only about 4000 years old, and nobody recalls any valid stories about its origins. (The Druids who celebrate summer solstice are modern inventions)
Three: 9000 years ago there were no tribes in the modern sense. There were probably only a few thousand people in all of North America, who might or might not be ancestors of the modern native americans.
I have lost all respect for Bruce Babbitt because of this chickenshit action.
I’m right there with ya, Bill. Having lived in Kennewick (yes, there are actually people who will admit to it), I’ve been following the story fairly closely.
I don’t blame Babbitt, personally, but there is a fairly frightening precedent set. Essentially, the feds have established that every person who lived in North America prior to the European conquest was directly linked to an existing ethnic group. And that there is no upper boundary on how long that link may last.
I just don’t understand why the tribes are so dead-set against this extremely valuable find being studied. Can anyone explain it to me in nice, small, stupid-whitey words?
Well, since they got it, I hope they hide it well or we can expect to see Kennewick Man Remains on e-bay pretty soon.
I disagree with the decision, but on the bright side, scientists have had them long enough to make casts, copies, spectrographs, MRI’s, whatever. At least these can still be studied. Hopefully, a few samples have also been squirreled away for future technology to get a look at.
I just don’t understand why the tribes are so dead-set against this extremely valuable find being studied. Can anyone explain it to me in nice, small, stupid-whitey words?**
As I recall from my Anthro courses, bones are consider particularly sacred by American Indians.
Unfortuately, the Act that covers the repatriation of American Indian artifacts is fairly clear on this. We can only guess that Kennewick Man was associated with the American Indians of that area by proximity, as, I believe, there were no other cultural artifacts with him.
No, it was not intended to be racist at all. I was implying that unscrupulous fortune hunters may decide to loot the burial site. After all the publicity, the bones could be sold for a lot of money to a private party.
Holy cow, one really must be careful of how one words a post. I thought I made my meaning pretty clear. Alas I shall try to do better henceforth.
Which American Indians? One thing I fail to understand is why white folks seem to think that all American Indians share the same culture. There are hundreds of different indigenous cultures in the US. Navajos (dine) won’t go near any part of a corpse, including bones, because they have a very strong death taboo, while the Hopi don’t care about bones, but they care very much about personal and religious prohibitions.
The Kennewick Man incident has been handled disgracefully, however you can’t blame Babbitt. Blame Congress, which passed Native American Graves Protection and Repatriation Act in 1990, effectively tying the Interior Department’s hands.
Nobody alive today has any sentimental ties to a 9,000 year old corpse. It’s a shame that scientific inquiry is being
subordinated to a specious claim of religious and cultural priority.
So when are the Austrians going to bury Otzi?
Chalk this up to another case of political correctness overiding all logic and scientific efforts. One would think that even the “Native American” tribes would want this valuable find studied to help trace the ancestry of all pre-Columbian arrivals to this continent. This find is so significant that you’d think they could pull their heads out of their rectal cavities just long enough to realize this.
