The genome of a famous 8,500-year-old North American skeleton, known as Kennewick Man, shows that he is closely related to Native American tribes that have for decades been seeking to bury his bones. The finding, reported today in Nature, seems likely to rekindle a legal dispute between the tribes and the researchers who want to keep studying the skeleton. Yet it comes at a time when many scientists — including those studying Kennewick Man — are trying to move past such controversies by inviting Native Americans to take part in their research.
“The controversy has been painful for lots of people; tribal members and scientists as well,” says Dennis O’Rourke, a biological anthropologist at the University of Utah in Salt Lake City. “I think the results will add weight to repatriation claims because now claims of ancestry can at least to some degree be clarified,” he says.
Soon after the Kennewick Man’s discovery in 1996, several local tribes demanded the return of what they dubbed the Ancient One. The US Army Corps of Engineers — the federal agency that manages the land where the remains were found — sided with the tribes, citing a 1990 law that mandated the return of Native American remains and artefacts to affiliated tribes, the Native American Graves Protection and Repatriation Act (NAGPRA).
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