9/26/00 11:45 a.m.
Kennewick Man's Last Stand
Babbitt is trying to slam the door shut on this find.

By John J. Miller, NR's national political reporter

he most controversial set of ancient human remains ever found in North America will be handed over to Indian tribes for burial before researchers can conduct a full study of them, announced Interior Secretary Bruce Babbitt on Monday. The decision affects the Kennewick Man skeleton, accidentally discovered by boating fans along the Columbia River four years ago, and it can only be described as a victory for radical multiculturalism over careful science.

Most people don't know the names of their grandparents' grandparents, but Babbitt insisted that the tribes petitioning for the remains have a right to them because they've occupied the area in Washington state where Kennewick Man was found "for millennia." Babbitt says he knows this is true because of the tribes' "oral histories."

The idea that any oral history stretches back 9,300 years — the estimated age of Kennewick Man — frankly stretches the truth. So does the notion that any modern Indian tribe even existed back then in anything like the cultural form it does today. Ninety centuries ago, the Pyramids hadn't been built — they were begun, in fact, on a date more contemporaneous with our own time than with Kennewick Man's.

Yet this is the basis for the government's decision giving the remains to Indian activists, who intend to bury them without permitting a complete examination.

The case is still tied up in court — a group of prominent scientists sued the federal government after it seized the bones from an anthropology lab four years ago with the intention of giving them to the tribes, under the auspices of the Native American Graves Protection and Repatriation Act. A judge told the government it had to weigh its decision more carefully, which Babbitt now claims to have done. (To read my National Review article on Kennewick Man from last year — including details on the government's abominably poor treatment of the remains — click here.)

If Babbitt's ruling stands, the loss to science is beyond comprehension. Bones this old are exceedingly rare, and Kennewick Man offers a vital look at the prehistoric settling of North America. These are a deeply intriguing set of remains, too, as they may share Caucasoid traits not found in today's Indian populations.

That's not to say Kennewick Man was white. Nobody knows the color of his skin, and it's a mistake even to care very much: Projecting modern racial categories onto the ancient past is as big an error as projecting tribal ones.

Some scientists have compared Kennewick Man's features to the ancient Ainu, an aboriginal Japanese group, or perhaps those of Southeast Asian or Polynesian populations. Without further investigation, however, none of these tantalizing links can be explored. DNA testing — perhaps of a type currently beyond the reach of science — might reveal important information about how the New World came to have people in it.

The discovery of Kennewick Man four years ago opened a door to the past, but the federal government has allowed scientists only to glimpse through the portal, rather than the right to walk through it. Now Babbitt is trying to slam the door shut, throw the deadbolt, and destroy the key.