Ghost of a flea: Kennewick Man

February 17, 2005

Kennewick Man

Having failed to block scientific investigation of the "Kennewick Man" remains, the Nez Perce Tribe, Confederated Tribes of the Umatilla Indian Reservation and Yakama Indian Nation are taking legal action in order to "participate" in investigation of future finds.

There is little chance the latest court action will have any effect on Kennewick Man studies, said Paula A. Barran of Portland, Ore., a lawyer for scientists eager to study the bones. "The court said the case is over and you've (the tribes) already been heard," she said. "You have made these arguments and lost."

The article does not address the blood and soil argument that underpins these First Nations' claims to the remains or the potential, oblique legal consquences of finding 9,400-year-old "caucasoid" remains in what is now called North America. While I am profoundly sympathetic to most native American legal claims I am profoundly suspicious of a logic that asserts religious or territorial claims can be authenticated, guaranteed or made legitimate by reference to an ethnic identity. Anyone wondering why should take a look at Asafolk & American Indians, an article published by the Asatru Folk Assembly. These are folks who see Kennewick Man as their own ancestor even as they relate to the concerns of other "native peoples" in claiming to find a "spiritual significance" in their "long line of forefathers and foremothers." Long held stereotypes about native North American religions risk turning living human beings into walking cultural fossils or cuddly Ewok people of dubious legal status. Applying the same logic to talk of ancestral blood and soil to "the runes" of European "tribes" evokes an entirely more sinister recent history.

In my opinion, bad science and wishful histories do no service to contemporary social and legal concerns of native peoples even as they risk reinforcing racist stereotypes of native peoples as irrational or part of "nature" and therefore somehow opposed to, or incapable of, technical or scientific thinking. Worse still, claiming a legal status of a spiritualized "race" falls all too neatly into profoundly racist discourses that suggest a piece of land somehow belongs to a group of people regardless of the lives of people now living in the land. I believe I have a concern with Kennewick Man not only as an anthropologist: he was my ancestor too. Not because I believe I belong to a European "tribe" but because I am a human being. First Nations peoples and would be Vikings alike should consider the fact that anyone who lived almost ten thousand years ago is an ancestor of us all and we all have a stake in hearing the story this man's bones have to tell.

Posted by Ghost of a flea at February 17, 2005 09:05 AM

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