Blackbear

************************************************** ************
This Message Is Reprinted Under The Fair Use
Doctrine Of International Copyright Law:
_http://www4.law.cornell.edu/uscode/17/107.html_
(http://www4.law.cornell.edu/uscode/17/107.html)
************************************************** ************

FROM: INDIAN COUNTRY TODAY NEWSPAPER

_http://www.indiancountry.com/content.cfm?id=1096412660_
(http://www.indiancountry.com/content.cfm?id=1096412660)

Harjo: 'Kennewick Man - The Greatest Show Unearthed'

(javascript:PrintWindow();) Posted: March 17, 2006 by: _Suzan Shown Harjo_
(http://www.indiancountry.com/author.cfm?id=26) / Indian Country Today

Time magazine and Kennewick scientists have turned the image of the
Ancient One into a freak show worthy of P.T. Barnum at his
sucker-born-every-minute best: ''Kennewick Man - The Greatest Show Unearthed.''

There he is on the March 13 Time magazine cover, identified as
''9,400-year-old Kennewick Man.'' He's a vaguely Slavic/Franco/Polynesian-looking fellow
with dark hair, heavy brows and blue eyes.

Blue eyes?

Yes, blue eyes. They're navy blue and baby blue, and glassy, like the creepy
eyes of a museum manikin. The left eye has just a touch of gold in it.

Time's creative rendering is the graphic equivalent of Dr. James Chatters'
1996 claim to every reporter on the planet that the Ancient One was Caucasian.


Chatters - the local anthropologist the coroner asked to investigate a
possible crime when two students found the human remains along the Columbia River
near Kennewick, Wash. - quickly changed his story, claiming he only said his
Kennewick Man had Caucasoid-like features and that even a bad scientist would
not have used the word ''Caucasian.''

As soon as the Colville, Nez Perce, Umatilla and Yakama nations claimed the
Ancient One, Chatters teamed up with Smithsonian and other federally-funded
scientists to try and prove that the Ancient One came from Asia or Europe and
was anything but Native American.

In their zealousness, the scientists lost some of the bones, which remain
unaccounted for today, and they sued for permission to study the rest.

Federal judges awarded Kennewick Man to the scientists by creating a legal
fiction: that human remains are Native American only after the founding of the
United States and older ones are ''archaeological resources.'' Presto! The
Native Ancient One was reclassified as federal property and scientists were
able to carve him up.

Time's blue-eyed Kennewick Man cover promises to reveal ''The Untold Saga of
Early Man in America,'' but the inside pages sport only more teases and
skewed visual aids.

The better part of two inside pages are devoted to photographs of the
Ancient One's skeleton, with detailed pictures of his skull, teeth and wounded
bones.

Two other pages feature another drawing of Kennewick Man. This time, he is a
very pale guy in a tank top and pedal pushers, wearing some weird bustle
covering his backside.

Another two pages of graphics (including another picture of the Ancient
One's skull that scientists and Time editors can't seem to get their fill of)
illustrate the ''Coming to America - Migration Milestones.''

The main theories depicted include the oldest and largely discredited one,
that everyone walked from Asia across the Bering Strait, and the newest, that
Native Americans really are French or Spanish and got here somehow across the
Atlantic Ocean. Russia's Lake Baikal region is pinpointed as one of the
possible sites where Native Americans originated.

It is worth noting that none of these European or American scientists'
theories allow for the possibility that Native peoples originated here or ever
traveled to Asia or Europe. And none of them even mention peoples of Africa as
having any part in any transoceanic travel theory.

Time reports breathlessly that Kennewick case plaintiff and Smithsonian
anthropologist Douglas Owsley and his team have been ''able to nail down or make
strong guesses about Kennewick Man's physical attributes'' and that the
findings are ''clearly worth the wait.''

Time's list of findings is of all things that have been known since he was
first studied in the late 1990s: his approximate height (5 feet 9 inches),
that he was muscular and that he was wounded. The only ''new finding'' is
Owsley's guess that the Ancient One might have been as young as 38, rather than an
earlier guess that he was 45 to 55 years old.

The story touts as the Owsley researchers' ''most remarkable discovery'' the
one that ''Kennewick Man had been buried deliberately.'' But that finding is
not new and it is not Owsley's.

It was reported in 1999 by National Park Service archaeologist Frank P.
McManamon that a scientific team of more than a dozen members, which did not
include Owsley or his researchers, concluded in studies conducted between Feb. 25
and March 1 of that year that the Ancient One was intentionally buried.

The fiction that there's something new here is no doubt prominent in
proposals for more federal dollars for more invasive research.

In advancing Owsley's fictions, Time is not simply his political tool. It is
both press flak and propaganda partner.

''Still, the bones have more secrets to reveal,'' the Time story pants on.
''The researchers may be able to determine whether he preferred meat or
fish.''

Whatever were Time's reporters and editors thinking? How can any study, no
matter how creatively speculative, determine his ''preferred'' cuisine? A
study may conclude what was eaten, but not what was favored or even liked.

The last page of the story features (what else?) one more photo of the
Ancient One's skull, this time with Owsley's face peering into it.

A Yakama Nation delegation attended the presentation by Owsley and his team
at a Feb. 23 meeting of the American Academy of Forensic Sciences. ''We went
over to Seattle to hear what Dr. Owsley had to say and we were very
disappointed just listening to him,'' said Yakama Council Member LaRena Sohappy.

''After the scientists probed and prodded this individual, we thought they
would return the remains to us so we could have a burial for the bones,'' said
Sohappy, who chairs the Yakama Cultural Committee. ''Now we understand they
are going to send the bones overseas to Japan and China so other scientists
can make more determinations.

''This is a disgraceful thing they are doing to the bones, tearing them
apart to study some more,'' said Sohappy.

Time's kicker quote is mostly a scold and gets to its own heart in the
matter: ''If scientists treat those bones with respect and Native American groups
acknowledge the importance of unlocking their secrets, the mystery of how and
when the New World was populated may finally be laid to rest.''

For Time, the real questions and their answers are to be found in their
sub-headlines: ''Who Really Discovered America?'' and ''Who Should Own the
Bones?''

Time's assumption (and hope, it would seem) is that Native peoples are not
the original owners of this land. The second question is even more disturbing
in its implication that anyone should ''own'' human remains.

That is the exact reason the repatriation laws were enacted: to get away
from the inhumane law that categorized Native Americans as property and to apply
international standards of human rights to deceased Native people.

Congress needs to take charge of this matter once again and clarify its
meaning - especially for those who are using the European migration game to
justify dissolving the repatriation laws. If it continues to do nothing, it
promotes this antiquated, barbaric notion that scientists and museums ''own''
Native American people.

Suzan Shown Harjo, Cheyenne and Hodulgee Muscogee, is president of the
Morning Star Institute in Washington, D.C., and a columnist for Indian Country
Today.

__________________
Don't worry that it's not good enough for anyone else to hear... just sing, sing a song.