Introduction to Mysterious Bones
Collections Manager, Archaeology
The Burke Museum of Natural History and Culture
Seattle, Washington
When Katherine Kirkpatrick first suggested this book, I hesitated to encourage her. There are so many people involved, and an equal number of opinions about Kennewick Man/Ancient One. Moreover, there is so much ill will, misinformation and a multitude of political agendas that have plagued the Kennewick Case that any attempt to fairly represent this controversy is likely impossible. Nearly all of the written information is comprised of court documents, newspaper articles full of misrepresentations, and a few books for the general public that only tell one side of the story. There are few articles in peer-reviewed scientific journals, and the real experiences are deeply personal. In order for Ms. Kirkpatrick to get a truer sense of the story, she would need to contact as many of the people involved as possible. This was no easy task, but, when she was ignored or turned away, she persevered. She worked hard to get the story from tribal members, the US Army Corps of Engineers, the plaintiffs in the case, and even museum staff who care for Kennewick Man/Ancient One. She spent hours and hours just listening. She saw how this case affects people, and in this book she has brought those different voices together.
Many people have a stake in this story. It is about a person who lived in North America. And, although we cannot determine details about his particular family, we do know that people have lived on this land for thousands of years and their descendants eventually came to be called Native Americans or American Indians. We know this from many lines of evidence: linguistics, archaeology, biology and oral histories. To date, all of the ancient remains in the Americas for which ancient dna was successfully extracted are directly linked to Native Americans. There is even a native Columbia Plateau story that tells of mammoths, as well as several oral histories about ice ages. However, this book illustrates that the Kennewick Case is not just about this ancient man’s life; it is about who controls the knowledge of the deep past.
The Kennewick case is deeply rooted in the present. It is critical to our time, and speaks more about who we are as a diverse group of Americans at the turn of the 20th Century then it does about the past. Today, bioethics—weighing the benefits of science against the impact on a people—has never been more salient. Science for the sake of knowledge must be justified: current bioethical controversies include genetically-modifying plants, using fetal stem cells, cloning animals, and testing a person’s dna for genetic diseases. No one would question that science has improved our world; how many lives have been saved because of antibiotics, refrigeration, and even cell phones to call 911? Yet, how people choose to use science for their own gain can be controversial and potentially harmful: consider nuclear bombs, ultrasound to identify girl babies, or strip mining to extract heavy metals.
In the Kennewick Case, indigenous people’s rights were eroded by a real fear on the part of some anthropologists that scientific analyses on ancient human remains would be restricted. Now that scientists have studied Kennewick Man/Ancient One, we as a diverse nation need to ask ourselves, was the knowledge gained worth it? What have we learned scientifically from this endeavor that improves our lives or helps us to better understand ourselves, our relationships with each other, and our histories? Bioethics is about asking these questions, respecting a variety of opinions and achieving compromises that provide positive results. This book provides multiple viewpoints from which we can bioethically examine the past and the present.
This piece was intended to be a forward to Mysterious Bones, but was cut for space. The author oversees Kennewick Man/ the Ancient One’s care at the Burke Museum.--KK