Why this is important is based on the whole concept of race in America. The standard story on race in American history is that "eeeeeeeeeeeeeeevilllllllllll" white men slaughtered and dispossessed the "Native Americans." Part of this story is that the pre-Columban inhabitants of the Western hemisphere (Eskimos excluded) were uniformly the descendants of Northeast Asians who migrated across the Bering Strait via an Ice Age "land bridge" 9,000-15,000 years ago.
This is the crux of the controversy about Kennewick Man. If DNA tests could establish that the remains found were not of Northeast Asian origin, but were in fact European, it would indicate that the original humans on this continent were of the same race as the Spanish, Portugese, English, French, and Dutch colonists who arrived after 1492. Thus, the cry of racism against these settlers would be less valid, as the Northeast Asians may have themselves dispossessed and slaughtered Europeans that preceded them in settling the Americas. The European takeover of the Western Hemisphere would be not unlike the Poles capturing the eastern German provinces of East Prussia, Pomerania, and Silesia after the fall of the Third Reich and "ethnically cleansing" them of Germans, though on a much larger scale. East Prussia, Pomerania, and Silesia had been Slavic lands in the early Middle Ages that were conquered and Germanized by men from Brandenburg and Upper Saxony. The Polonization of these provinces after 1945 was a reconquest of formerly Slavic lands by Slavs.
Another reason for the importance of the origins has to do with the standard historical theory of separate development. Mainstream historians, imbued with liberal theories of the equivalence of all culture and modern egalitarianism, react with fury when someone suggests that features of "Native American" culture, technology, religion, or language may not be autochthonous. They react against not only suggestions that American Indians were influenced by Europeans or Middle Easterners, but by East Asians or Africans. Thus, they will argue that artifacts such as Roman Empire coins in Venezuela or carved runic writings in Minnesota are fraudulent. To suggest that corn or tobacco may have migrated to Asia or Africa before Columbus is also heretical. If there is irrefutable genetic evidence that, say, southern Chinese people were in pre-Columban Mexico or Middle Easterners were in pre-Columbian North Carolina, the separate development theory would become invalid.
Most of the nation's academics and the liberal media elite will fight any attempt to deflate their fundamental beliefs. Where irrefutable evidence of Middle Eastern and Mediterranean genes exists among the Melungeons and similar groups, there will be attempts made to pin them on such people as shipwrecked Moorish or Iberian sailors, Turkish pirates, "secret" Jews, etc., all of whom would have arrived after 1492. However, if the origins of some of the Melungeons and similar groups included, for example, Phoenician or Hebrew traders from classical times, the theory of the autochthonous cultural development of the pre-Columban inhabitants of the Americas is invalid.
Political and philosophical issues are involved in the issue of the origins of the Melungeons and of the American Indians in general. Expect the liberal establishment to fight virulently against any attempt to overturn the established line on the "oppressed Native Americans in tune with the rhythms of nature."