Thursday, Jul. 22, 2004

Justice won't appeal Kennewick Man case

By The Associated Press

PORTLAND - The U.S. Justice Department has joined Northwest tribes in clearing the way for scientists to study the Kennewick Man remains.

Blain Rethmeier, a Justice Department spokesman, said the agency would not ask the U.S. Supreme Court to review the 8-year-old case. The deadline for an appeal passed Monday.

The Umatilla, Nez Perce, Colville and Yakama tribes decided last week against appealing a ruling that anthropologists could study the 9,300-year-old skeleton.

The Umatilla's board of trustees said they would work with other tribes to strength the federal Native American Graves Protection and Repatriation Act, which had been the focus of the lawsuit.

In February, a three-judge panel of the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals ruled in favor of eight anthropologists who had sued the federal government in 1996 seeking to study the remains. The judges backed an earlier decision by Magistrate John Jelderks of the U.S. District Court in Portland.

The scientists' attorney, Alan L. Schneider, said his clients will work with the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers about the details of a study of Kennewick Man, which is being stored at the Burke Museum in Seattle.

The nearly complete skeleton was found on the banks of the Columbia River on July 31, 1996. The Corps of Engineers decided to give the skeleton to the tribes for burial, prompting the anthropologists' lawsuit.