Kennewick Man

[ST88]

Kennewick Man is an almost complete, ancient skeleton that was purportedly found near the Columbia River in Kennewick, Washington in 1996. Dating tests put the skeleton at about 7600-7300 BCE. It was a startling find because the cranial structure does not resemble other Native American tribes thought to be in the region at that time, and this is a matter of both scientific and political controversy.

Almost immediately, the skeletal remains of Kennewick man were claimed by several Native American tribes, who demanded that they be returned for proper ceremonial burial according to their religious beliefs. This would effectively end scientific inquiry on the remains. A lawsuit followed, and the remains were seized by the local Conservation Corps until the matter could be settled. In 2002, a judge ruled that there wasn't enough evidence to show that Kennewick man was ethnically Native American, so the remains should not be returned. However, there is a bill in the Senate that would immediately repatriate all remains from all Native American areas, the Native American Graves Protection and Repatriation Act. If passed, all Native American artifacts would be available for return to the land in which they were found if the tribes who currently occupy the land make the request.

I am curious if Native Americans are a special case because of U.S. collective guilt, or if this is part of a general trend in government to give special dispensation for all religions. Should religious beliefs be allowed to supercede the interests of science where the two conflict?

[ST88]

I still maintain that if we take the question in isolation, knowledge for knowledge's sake is on par with useless spiritualism.

Perhaps I will change your mind yet. You appear to be saying that the pursuit of knowledge for knowledge's sake will yield trivia. Perhaps it will for the current age. However, today's trivia can be tomorrow's evidence. Some data doesn't make any sense until it is analyzed with subsequent techniques or compared with subsequent data. "Useless spiritualism", if it is indeed useless, is mere gratification of the present to the exclusion of future utility.

And, though I'm not really sure if it's a "fruit of living", there isn't anything wrong with knowledge for knowledge's sake. It's just a rather long slogan. Art for art's sake is much more compact and much more satisfying. For all useless things, aesthetics is an important consideration.

I should know better than arguing with another aesthete.

Don't all relics, ruins and fossils technically belong to the ruler of whatever land they are found in, and hasn't that been the only method of determining ownership of these sorts of discoveries since time began, though it's entirely arbitrary?

Yes, it had been true. And it was largely because identification techniques were not available. What should the Vatican do, for example, if the remains of St. Clement (a Roman) were proved to be those of a Mongolian farmer? The purported remains of this 1st century saint were found in a bay in the Black Sea in the 9th century according to the legend of how he was martyred. I have a feeling they would be given back to Mongolia if it could be proven. But, of course, they will not allow the relics to be analyzed.

I'm not entirely sure about this, but don't some Indian tribes have land of their own, and are their own sovereign nations? If so, we should be grateful the remains weren't found inside their borders.

The tribes have been given autonomous regions within the U.S., subject to limited Federal control, but largely self-governing. The remains were not found inside their borders, but under the law that allowed the remains to be seized, that didn't matter:

NAGRPA, enacted in 1990, was designed to correct a long-standing grievance of Native Americans. Ever since the 19th century, Indian burial sites throughout the United States had been plundered of human remains, sacred relics, and pieces of art. Some of the material ended up in private collections. But many items, especially skulls and bones, were sent to museums for study. Scientists used the remains to learn about the Indian populations of North America.

Many Native Americans were offended by these practices. They believed that the souls of their ancestors could not find peace unless their remains rested in proper graves. They believed that keeping the remains for study showed that white people did not respect Indian culture or practices. How would whites feel, they argued, if Native Americans dug up white cemeteries and kept the bones or put them on display? NAGRPA addressed these concerns. It also applied to federally funded museums, which were required to make an inventory of their collections, identify the source, and return items to the appropriate tribe.

The Army Corps of Engineers decided that this law applied to the Kennewick Man. It based its finding on the fact that the Kennewick bones were over 9,000 years old and were found on the traditional tribal lands of the Umatilla Indians. They reasoned that this was too old for the remains to have been anything other than Native American. As a result, the corps notified several Washington state and northern Oregon tribes about the find, including the Umatilla Indians. The tribes demanded a halt to the study of the bones and asked that they be returned, some wanting immediate reburial. The corps seized the bones and stored them for the required 30-day waiting period for other claims as required by the law. During this time, the corps refused any further scientific study, nor would they permit the bones to be photographed.
-- The Kennewick Controversies

Bold mine.

Because of the cultural presumption we have that Native Americans were here during this time, the remains were assumed to fall into this preconception. But if this exception is the one that proves (exposes as faulty) the rule, how can we ignore it?