c. 1997 Religion News Service

KENNEWICK, Wash. _ A battle is raging here on the banks of the Columbia River over the right to venerate, study, or bury forever, a 9,200-year-old skeleton known as Kennewick Man.

The combatants are Native American religionists, who claim the bones as the sacred remains of an ancestor who deserves to rest in peace, and anthropologists who speculate that Kennewick Man is actually of European descent.

Their weapons are the ceremonial rattles and ritual drums that echo in the vault where Kennewick Man’s bones are locked away and occasionally venerated by those who consider them sacred; carbon-dating and DNA research techniques; and the beliefs of Indian creationists, who adhere to the myths of their origins as fervently as biblical literalists interpret the Book of Genesis.

There are also postings on competing Web sites and the occasional legal action filed in federal district court, where the issue will ultimately be resolved.

And now, modern-day practitioners of the pre-Christian religions of Europe,have joined the fray, contending the square-jawed, high-cheekboned hunter is a kinsman bearing an important spiritual message.

On Wednesday, (Aug. 27) under the silent and disapproving gaze of local Indian leaders, Steven McNallen, leader of the Asatru Folk Assembly, a California-based group devoted to the practice of ancient Norse, Germanic and Celtic beliefs, erected a makeshift altar to the Norse god Odin in the waterfront park. It was here on this former Indian burial ground that Kennewick Man emerged from the mud in July, 1996 and was discovered by two college boys who had come to watch hydroplane races.

Attired in a black velvet tunic and flowing, sky-blue cape, McNallen raised the ceremonial “hammer of Thor” to the wide-open Eastern Washington sky and led nine followers in offering libations of honeyed wine to their gods.

“We’re here to give thanks to the elements of nature, to the earth that protected this individual that the world calls Kennewick Man. We give thanks to the Earth that nourished him when he was alive; covered him when he died and now has delivered him to us,” McNallen prayed. “He is our ancestor, the far-traveling one. He has a message for us. I don’t know what it is, but it is our task to listen to what he has to say.”

But Kennewick Man, regarded as the most complete and best-preserved ancient skeleton ever discovered in North America, is not yielding many of his secrets.

The Army Corps of Engineers, current custodian of Kennewick Man because of its jurisdiction over federal lands, has kept the skeleton locked away in a climate-controlled vault of the Batelle Pacific Northwest National Laboratory in nearby Richmond, occasionally allowing Indian leaders _ and now the California pagans _ to perform religious ceremonies over the sealed box of bones. Kennewick Man will remain in administrative limbo until Judge John Jelderks, a federal magistrate in Portland, sorts out the competing claims.

Eight prominent anthropologists, including Dennis J. Stanford, chairman of the Smithsonian Institution’s anthropology department, are challenging the Corps’ decision last year to give the bones to five Columbia River Indian tribes, under the provisions of the 1990 Native American Graves Protection and Repatriation Act, which requires Indian skeletons and artifacts to be returned to the tribe on whose land it was found.

But anthropologists who carbon-dated and CAT-scanned the skeletons before members of the Umatilla, Yakama, Nez Perce, Colville and Wanapum tribes called a halt to research they considered to be an act of desecration, contend Kennewick Man is not an Indian.

Ninety-two hundred years ago, some scholars argue, there was no evidence of American Indian presence in North America. According to anthropologist James Chatters, the first to examine the skeleton, Kennewick Man’s square jaw, long, narrow skull and lanky build are not characteristic of American Indians.

Kennewick man, Chatters believes, could be some kind of “ultimate elder,” who could challenge the long-held notion that the first Americans _ native Americans _ originated in Asia and migrated across a land bridge that once connected the two continents. Kennewick man could be from an entirely different, and now extinct, genetic line, Chatters says.

None of these findings are convincing to Armand Minthorn, a religious leader of the Confederated Tribes of the Umatilla Indian Reservation.

“If this individual is truly 9,000 years old, that only substantiates our belief that he is Native American,” Minthorn said. “From our oral histories, we know that our people have been part of this land since the beginning of time. We do not believe our people migrated here from another continent, as the scientists do. We do not agree with the notion that this individual is Caucasian.

“Scientists say that because the individual’s head measurement does not match ours, he is not American Indian. We believe humans and animals change over time to adapt to their environment. And our elders have told us Indian people did not always look the way we look today.”

Minthorn also rejects the claim that tribal leaders’ refusal to allow invasive research techniques such as DNA testing will ultimately separate Indians from their own history.

“We already know our history,” he said. “It is passed on to us through our elders and through our religious practice.”

Minthorn’s attitudes reflect a growing interest among tribal peoples in American Indian creationism, which rejects the theory of evolution and other explanations of human origins, in favor of tribal creation myths that contend native peoples have always dwelled in the Americas, as subterranean spirits that later emerged as human beings.

University of Colorado historian Vine DeLoria, Jr., rejects prevailing anthropological theories theories that Native Americans are descended from Asian peoples who crossed the Bering Strait. In his 1995 book, “Red Earth, White Lies” (Scribner), DeLoria dismisses such claims as “scientific folklore.”

And as such ideas gain strength among some tribal members, fueled by centuries of bitterness over discrimination; wholesale desecration of Indian remains by scientists, and warehousing of Indian artifacts in museums, anthropologists and archaeologists express fears that legitimate scientific research on human origins will fall victim to a culture of political correctness.

But perceptions of political correctness cut both ways. And the decision by the Army Corps of Engineers to allow McNallen and nine members of his Asatru Folk Assembly to venerate Kennewick Man’s remains Wednesday in a private religious ceremony that preceded the ritual in the park has deeply disturbed the region’s Indian community.

Carl Samson, chief of the Walla Walla tribe, and Umatilla official Jeff van Pelt failed to persuade McNallen and his attorney, Michael Clinton, to call off the ceremony.

Allen Slickpoo, Sr., historian of the Nez Perce tribe, characterized it as a ploy to publicize the fact that the Odin-worshipers had filed a lawsuit to allow DNA testing of Kennewick Man. Bill Yallup, Sr., an official of the Yakama Tribe, likened the Norse ritual to strangers dancing on his grandmother’s grave.

To Armand Minthorn, the Umatilla religious leader, it all comes down to respect.

“Our religion and our elders have taught us that we have an inherent responsibility to care for those who are no longer with us,” said Minthorn, the Umatilla religious leader. “We have a responsibility to protect all human burials, regardless of race. We are taught to treat them all with the same respect.

We are not trying to be troublemakers, we are doing what our elders have taught us _ to respect people while they’re with us, and after they’ve become a part of the earth.”

DEA END CONNELL