The Ancient One, or Kennewick Man, is one of the most contentious disagreements of which NAGPRA is at the center. The reburial of Uytpama Natitayt (Ancient One) is a story that showcases the successes, failings, and inevitable complexities of a law like NAGPRA, or the Native American Graves Protection and Repatriation Act.
In July of 1996, the nearly complete skeleton of a man was found on the banks of the Columbia River on federal land near Kennewick, Washington. After determining the bones were too old to warrant a criminal investigation, local anthropologists were called in to do an evaluation of the bones. Initially, because of the shape of the bones, they were thought to have belonged to an early European settler or trapper. However, radiocarbon dating aged the bones somewhere between 8,340 and 9,200 years old, far before any European would have set foot on North American land.
Courtesy Kennewick Man Virtual Interpretive Center via HistoryLink
Based on the scientific technology available at that time, scientists argued that the bones were not those of an ancestor to current Native people. They were too old and too different in shape, and thus, not subject to NAGPRA. Several tribes, the Confederated Tribes of the Umatilla Reservation, the Confederated Tribes and Bands of the Yakama Indian Nation, the Nez Perce Tribe of Idaho, the Confederated Tribes of the Colville Reservation, and the Wanapum Band, argued, based largely on oral tradition, that the Ancient One was, in fact, an ancestor and so was subject to the enforcement provided by NAGPRA.
Under NAGPRA, any agency that receives federal fund must return and repatriate any human remains identified to be that of Native American to the concerned tribe. Many museums had large collections of Native American spiritual and cultural artifacts, including human remains. These remains were largely collected during the twentieth century as part of a larger pattern of colonization of Native peoples. Not only were these previously collected human remains subject to NAGPRA, but any newly discovered remains on federal land must be returned for reburial.
The Kennewick Man, as he was referred to by non-Native parties, represented an intersection of many of these problems. What did it mean to be “Native?” Does science or religion take precedence in matters of supposed national interest? The case even called into question the accepted forms of historic documentation: Native tribes had oral traditions claiming that they had always been on the land, and so of course the Ancient One would be their ancestor, evidence which would later be dismissed by both the lower and Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals as part of the larger Bonnichsen v. United States case, or the Kennewick Man case.
It was not until scientific inquiry was able to take a DNA sample from the Ancient One and compare it to different races around the world that it was determined that he was, in fact, most closely related to the Native people of the Columbia Plateau. In February of 2017, the remains of Uytpama Natitayt (Ancient One), were laid to rest in a private ceremony in the company of his descendants, finally returned after almost twenty years of legal battles over his identity. NAGPRA eventually helped the Ancient One return to his people, but at the same time provokes harder questions about authenticity and identity in a world that values “firsts.”
Repatriation and NAGPRA in Oregon 