Running Head: ETHICS SURROUNDING AMERICAS DECEASED ANCESTORS
Kennewick Man, Disrespecting the Native Americans And
The Ethics Surrounding Americas Deceased Ancestors
Jared Hansen
Salt Lake Community College
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ETHICS SURROUNDING AMERICAS DECEASED ANCESTORS
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Kennewick Man, Disrespecting the Native Americans And
The Ethics Surrounding Americas Deceased Ancestors
Physical Anthropology is a biological science that deals with the adaptations, variability,
and evolution of human beings and their living and fossil relatives (Hagen, E. 2015). This
important work cannot be done in isolation from the world and because of this there arise
challenges of Ethics.
For decades professionals have sought to explain the origins of those that populated the
Americas. Most of them have turned to the Clovis-first model. The Clovis-first model proposes
that an offshoot of Siberia made their way across the Bering Land Bridge, traveled down the Icefree Corridor between the Cordilleran and Laurentide ice sheets over 11,000 years ago. This
single cultured, single language migration was able to spread along the Americas as they
multiplied thanks to their advanced hunting and gathering techniques. It is because of this
widely accepted model that many believe Native Americas are all from the same ancestral line.
The Native American’s have great respect for their ancestors yet there are many different
cases of the Native American’s ancestors being taken from their burial sites and put on display
here in America. This is very disrespectful in the eyes of the Natives. They believe that proper
reverence is owed to the deceased. The Smithsonian Institute is one place that received media
attention in the late 80’s for this kind of behavior. They had on display skeletons of American
Indian ancestors. The sources of these skeletons have origins from all over the country. In
response the Senate introduced the Bill 978, the National Museum of the American Indian Act.
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In this Bill the remains were repatriated from the Smithsonian Institute along with the remains
held at Museums and Universities across the country (Rose, 1996). Another Bill that was passed
in 1990 is NAGPRA or Naïve American Graves Protection and Repatriation Act. This Act
affects all institutions that receive federal funding. Under this Act the descendants of the remains
get custody and can then rebury, hold ceremonies, and do as there deem fit to the bones namely
to give them peace once again by burying them. This Act specifically covers Native Americans
and Hawaiian skeletons (Rose, 1996). However what constitutes a Native American?
A particularly famous case that is shroud in this debate is the case of the Kennewick
Man. The Kennewick man was found off the banks of the Columbia River in eastern
Washington in 1996 on land belonging to the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers who seized them
and have been holding them at the University of Washington. The Native Americans believe
that this skeleton is part of their ancestral history. Several tribes came together with NAGPRA
backing them in hopes of obtaining possession and then reburying the skeleton. However eight
prominent American Anthropologists came together to defend their stance that experienced
professionals should be allowed to examine and study Kennewick Man because of the
tremendous knowledge that could be gained and sued for the rights to the Kennewick Man on the
grounds that he is not “Native American”. Due to the structure of the brain being narrow with a
prominent forehead they claim Kennewick Man may be more closely related to those in coastal
Asian locations, not Native Americans.
One of the eight plantiffs, Rob Bonnichsen, explains it as a key piece in a large piece of
America’s ancestry. He explains the most accepted model of how America was populated the
Clovis-first model may not be entirely accurate. According to mounting evidence this theory is
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being questioned and he thinks that Kennewick can help give some answers. He goes on to
explain that “Our knowledge of America's earliest biological and cultural heritage remains
amazingly thin. For example, there are fewer than 35 dated human skeletal remains in the New
World older than 8,000 years old. Most of these early remains are fragmentary. The Kennewick
Man skeleton is one of the most complete early skeletons from the Americas, and its study by
competent scientists is essential to understanding his morphology, genetics, health, diet, lifestyle,
etc., and his relationship to other New and Old World populations. Only through the study of
important individual skeletons, such as Kennewick Man, from different regions and different
times will the scientific community be able to build a coherent picture of America's past.”
Another plantiff C. Loring Brace argues that the government should not hand over the
bones of the oldest skeleton in the North America because they believe that it have some
ancestral link. The old saying “if you’ve seen one Indian, you’ve seen them all” is incredibly
naïve and we should not take this same approach with this finding (Nova Online, 2000). Even if
these remains did belong to the Native Americans Brace argues that in order to find out which
specific tribes he is actually related to is one reason that scientific analysis should be done on the
remains. Braces uses the example of when Harvard University returned the burials from Pecos
Pueblo that had been in the Peabody Museum in Cambridge, Massachusetts. Harvard didn’t just
hand over the skeletons to the Navajo because they are a tribe in the Northwest. They returned
them to the Hopi, also in the Northwest because they actually were related to the Hopi. However
you have to know who the skeletal remains relates to in order to give them back. In this
particular case the historical knowledge of who was related to whom was known. However in
Kennewick’s case this information is not known.
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Conclusion
While respect of our ancestors is important I agree with the Anthropologist’s stance on
this argument. We know so little of America’s past that a discovery like Kennewick Man
outweighs the Native Americans traditions of putting to rest the skeleton. The most widely
accepted theory regarding the origins of the original Americans potentially lays in the balance
that the Kennewick Man could tip supporting the Clovis-first model or it could tip the way a give
rise to other theories. The fact that the Kennewick Man dates back over 9,000 years is enough
for me to conclude that the Kennewick Man would be more beneficial to a larger and greater
good in the hands of science. Until the origin of the Kennewick Man is discovered I do not think
that this should even be in discussion. If he truly is Native American then the discussion of
whether to bury him or not can come into play.
ETHICS SURROUNDING AMERICAS DECEASED ANCESTORS
References
Bonnichsen, R. (2000). Claims for the Remains. Nova online. Retrieved from
http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/first/claimbonn.html
Hagen, E. (2015). American Association of Physical Anthropologists. Retrieved from
http://physanth.org/
Nova Online (2000) Claims for the Remains. Nova Online. Retrieved from
http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/first/claim.html
Rose, J. & Green, T. (1996) NAGPRA and the Future of Skeletal Research. Annual Review of
Anthropology, 25, 194-197.
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