Idaho

Tribes discuss clash of culture, science
Conference stresses bones of ancestors are not artifacts

Julie Titone
Staff writer

MOSCOW _ Some Coeur d'Alene Indians have requested to be cremated, so great is their fear that someday a scientist will dig up and study their bones.

Richard Mullan, tribal cultural resource manager shared that information Thursday during a passionate discussion about the relationship between native wisdom and science. A frequent topic was the man known to Northwest Indians as "the Ancient One." Some scientists know him as Kennewick Man. They've fought for the right to continue studying his 9,300-year-old skeleton in search of clues about the origin of the region's earliest settlers.

"To me that person -- he's somebody's relative. How do you dare not bury that man?" Mullan said, adding that his frustration at the scientists makes him go out to the mountains to holler and scream. "What does it to take for you to understand?"

Understanding the world from the Indian viewpoint is a theme at the Native American Heritage Conference under way at the University of Idaho. Thursday's panel discussion was part of that, and was followed by an evening talk by David Hurst Thomas, author of "Skull Wars: Kennewick Man, Archaeology, and the Battle for Native American Identity."

Law Professor Rebecca Tsosie focused heavily on the topic of cultural sovereignty in her address, which opened the conference on Wednesday. She contrasted it with the political sovereignty guaranteed by treaty but weakened, in her view, by court decisions made in an era when Indians were considered savages.

The key to holding onto political sovereignty and self-determination, she said, lies in preserving "tribal wisdom, tribal land and tribal cultural identity."

Cultural identity as reflected in respect for ancestors was discussed at length by the tribal representatives gathered on Thursday.

Richard Buck, of Washington's Wanapum tribe, recalled from his youth how non-Indians used to park their trucks all along the banks of the Columbia River. They were there to dig up graves and steal ceremonial objects. They left the bones behind.

"They would throw them in a pile," Buck said.

Archeologist Julie Longenecker used to work along the Columbia, surveying and cataloging artifacts on the Hanford Nuclear Reservation.

"We never really thought about the people who lived there thousands of years ago," said Longenecker, who is white. "Acquiring scientific data is for some people more important than respecting culture."

Since going to work for the Umatilla Indians, she said, "I have been taught that the artifacts I find were put there for a reason and should remain there."

The responsibility of tribal resource managers goes beyond science to the preservation of culture, said Jeff Van Pelt of the Umatillas.

It's unfortunate that the Kennewick Man issue has boiled down to a debate between science and religion, he said. "We're not anti-science. We're very much into making informed decisions."

The reason that so many artifacts remain, Van Pelt noted, is that native people respected the possessions of their ancestors and believed "it just wasn't healthy to pick up someone else's medicine and use it."

Josiah Pinkham, an ethnologist with the Nez Perce tribe, sees no value to further study of the Kennewick Man because it doesn't benefit the tribe.

"We know where he came from," Pinkham said. "He came from the earth."

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