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To: Bernard Marx
I agree the genocide accusation is a giant leap with no evidence. But if the Kennewick or other remains prove to be non-Indian it would certainly muddy Indian claims to be the "first Americans." Maybe the Siberian immigrants lived in peace with the [possible] earlier North American inhabitants, maybe not. I'll wait for evidence on all counts.

I think we may be on similar pages here. AS an American Indian who's people have lived here for over 10,000 years, I don't have any vested interest in proving whether anyone was here first, or second etc... That doesn't define who I am.

There were waves of migrations to this continent - over thousands of years, varoius groups came here and passed through the northwest on their way to other places. Some stayed, some didn't. Not all of those groups are going to be the same. There is a huge difference between those arriving cultures, and those cultures that developed here.

Kennewick man wasn't what we would consider a modern American Indian - cultures and people change after thousands of years - but he was an ancestor, most certainly. He was of Asian stock, based on all the studies. So, he doesn't really prove anything, other than that 9300 years ago there was a guy here with asian ancestry.

But political interference with the scientific investigation of the evidence doesn't pass the smell test. Maybe there are some nefarious motives on both sides of the issue.

I'm sure there are. However, I think there is a valid point that having on'es ancestor dug up and studied kinda sucks if you think about it... Other than that, they have no valid reason to stop the studies...

I don't see all the Indian threads but I don't recall anyone suggesting the abrogation of treaties and agreements.

It happened even in this thread... not by you, but by others...

40 posted on 10/01/2004 10:06:29 PM PDT by Chad Fairbanks (How do you ask a hamster to be the last hamster to die for a mistake?)
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To: Chad Fairbanks
AS an American Indian who's people have lived here for over 10,000 years, I don't have any vested interest in proving whether anyone was here first, or second etc...

Neither do I. I'm a blend of American Indian and European but I don't try to hang on to either past -- I'm an American.

Who's to say (without full scientific study and evidence) which cultures developed here? Obstructing the study of Kennewick Man doesn't contribute to the evidence base. Nobody knows for sure at this point whether Kennewick was an Indian "ancestor," as you call him, or whether he was as distinct from Indians racially as a Cro Magnon was from a Neanderthal. If you frame the question broadly enough, all humans are linked through ancestry.

When Kennewick man was discovered half-buried on a bank of the Columbia River they thought at first he was the remains of a recent homicide. No one deliberately dug him up in violation of tradition. But it soon became clear the remains were worthy of careful anthropological study. Your claims in an earlier post that the scientists have studied him sufficiently simply isn't true. There's an enormous amount yet to be learned from the remains. The politicians moved in almost as soon as they learned of the discovery and did enormous damage both to the Kennewick bones and the discovery site. They grabbed the bones before any serious study had begun. The matter's been litigated ever since and some of the bones have gone missing already.

50 posted on 10/01/2004 10:47:36 PM PDT by Bernard Marx (I try to take one day at a time, but sometimes several days attack me at once.)
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