Kennewick Man

Kennewick Man is the name generally given to the skeletal remains of a prehistoric Paleoamerican man found on a bank of the Columbia River in Kennewick, Washington, on July 28, 1996. It is one of the most complete ancient skeletons ever found. Radiocarbon tests on bone have shown it to date from 8.9k to 9k calibrated years before present.

The discovery of the remains led to considerable controversy, as the Umatilla people and other tribes have wanted the remains returned to them for reburial under the federal Native American Graves Protection and Repatriation Act (NAGPRA). The law was designed to remedy long-standing wrongs done to tribes and to facilitate the return of human remains and cultural objects unlawfully obtained or taken from them. In this case, the archaeologists who discovered the bones, James Chatters and Douglas Owsley, the latter with the Smithsonian Institution, both asserted that the bones were unrelated to today's Native Americans. They said the remains had features that more closely resembled Polynesian or Southeast Asian peoples, a finding that would exempt the bones from NAGPRA.

Kennewick Man became the subject of a controversial nine-year court case between the United States Army Corps of Engineers, scientists, and Native American tribes who claimed ownership of the remains. Under NAGPRA, the tribes would maintain the right to rebury the remains of Kennewick Man and to refuse to allow scientific study of the man they referred to as "the Ancient One." The US Army Corps of Engineers, which oversaw the land where the remains were found, agreed to comply with the requests of the tribes. Before the transfer could be made, Owsley, along with seven other anthropologists, including Smithsonian colleague Dennis Stanford, filed a lawsuit asserting the scientific right to study the skeleton.

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