Appeals court says scientists can study Kennewick Man

By Joseph B. Frazier
The Associated Press

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The court upheld a decision last August by U.S. Magistrate Judge John Jelderks in Portland that the remains, which Northwest Indian tribes consider sacred, can be studied.

The tribes wanted the bones, found on the north bank of the Columbia River in 1996 by teenagers going to a boat race, turned over to them for burial.

The three-judge panel found that the remains do not fall under the Native American Graves Protection and Repatriation Act and can be studied under the Archaeological Resources Protection Act.

The decision was written by Judge Ronald M. Gould.

The bones currently are housed at the Burke Museum at the University of Washington in Seattle.

The Army Corps of Engineers initially agreed with the tribes and seized the bones before they could be transported to the Smithsonian Institution in Washington, D.C.

Scientists seeking to study the bones went to court to get access to them but eventually the decision was made by former Interior Secretary Bruce Babbitt, who ordered the bones returned to the tribes in September 2000.

But the appeals court wrote that the repatriation law "unambiguously requires that human remains bear some relationship to a presently existing tribe or people, or culture to be considered Native American."

Interior Department scientists concluded the remains were unlike those of any known modern Indians but it did not rule out some distant biological connection.

The appeals court, however, said there must be a more recent link to justify returning the bones and preventing any scientific study.

The ruling said the remains date to a time before any recorded history and that that makes it impossible to establish any relationship with existing Indians.

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