Sunday, Sep. 21, 2003

Book explores battle over bones

By The Associated Press

SEATTLE -- Kennewick Man, the ancient skeleton found in the Columbia River with a spear point in his hip, undoubtedly had an adventuresome life more than 9,000 years ago.

But he's in the center of even more tumult in death, as American Indians backed by the federal government battle scientists for possession of his remains.

To archaeologists, Kennewick Man represents questions for study about the first people to populate the North American continent after the last ice age. To the Umatilla and other Northwest tribes there is no doubt that he is their ancestor and should be returned as quickly as possible to the ground.

The story, the conflict and the personalities involved are set forth in one of the most readable books yet about Kennewick Man: No Bone Unturned: The Adventures of a Top Smithsonian Forensic Scientist and the Legal Battle for America’s Oldest Skeletons by Jeff Benedict (HarperCollins, New York, 320 pages, $25.95).

The hero of the story is Doug Owsley, forensic anthropologist at the Smithsonian Institution. After he was blocked from studying the bones he led a group of other scientists in a lawsuit to save Kennewick Man for science. It's still in the courts.

To the eye as well-trained as Owsley's, Kennewick Man's bones could indicate what he ate, how he lived and what life was like 450 generations ago. That spear wound, for example, apparently healed over. He lived with a stone point in his hip for a while.

Owsley, like the first expert to examine the bones, paleontologist consultant James Chatters of Richland, could see that Kennewick Man's skull is unlike the skulls of American Indians. It most closely matches a people from northern Japan called the Ainu.

To Owsley, the issue is not just Kennewick Man but whether any human remains from before the time of Columbus can be studied. He highlights the irony of the U.S government standing in the way of scientific progress.

Kennewick Man has been in the middle of a custody dispute since the skeleton was discovered in 1996 in shallow water of the Columbia River at Kennewick. The bones are held at the Burke Museum in Seattle while a federal appeals court decides whether a magistrate was correct in deciding in favor of the scientists. Arguments were held Sept. 10 in Portland.

The Corps of Engineers wanted to surrender the bones, to satisfy tribes with which it had bigger environmental concerns. It was backed by the Justice Department of an administration sensitive to the growing political clout of tribes, Benedict writes.

As a result, the federal government lined up behind Indian fundamentalism as stated by Armand Minthorn, a religious leader of the Umatillas: "We did not cross any land bridge like the scientists tell us. Our religion tells us we were created here. Period," Benedict writes.

Benedict makes this all the more interesting by focusing on personalities.

The first third of the book is all about Owsley, portraying him as an Indiana Jones-style scientist.

The middle third of the book is about the discovery of the bones and people like Chatters and Benton County Coroner Floyd Johnson and their initial conflict with federal authorities.

The last third is about the lawsuit. With deft portraits of lawyers, Benedict makes it read like a legal thriller. The Connecticut author is a king in court.

In a sense, Benedict is a literary forensics expert, looking at the aging evidence to make an issue vividly come to life.