Unpopular opinion about the Kennewick Man reburial

I was at a lecture at the Burke Museum in Seattle back in 2017 when they announced the reburial decision. Everyone around me was nodding along about how it was the right thing to do respecting Native traditions. But I couldn't help feeling like we were throwing away a one of a kind window into pre-Columbian America just to avoid a political fight. The scientists only got like 20 years of study time before it got handed over. I stood up and asked the panel if we could have kept a small bone sample for future DNA tech, but they shut me down fast saying it wasn't negotiable. Now we have zero chance to verify those early claims about the Solutrean hypothesis or check his genome with newer methods. Has anyone else felt like we lost something permanent in that decision?

2 comments

2 Comments

ericnguyen14h ago

The whole thing was a huge missed opportunity. That skeleton was one of the very few we had from that time period on this continent, and it could have told us so much about migration patterns if they had just kept a tiny tooth or a bit of bone marrow. Now when some lab invents a technique that can read DNA from a single cell in 50 years, we will never get to apply it to him. It feels like we chose tradition over science without even trying to find a middle ground.

lunab9714h ago

@ericnguyen nailed it with the single cell thing. Best move is to start emailing your state reps every session about updating NAGPRA to allow for small non-destructive samples in cases this rare. If enough people do it every year the rules might actually shift.