random bables about the kennewick man and NAGPRA

This is a difficult situation involving ancient remains and the Native American Graves Protection and Repatriation Act (NAGPRA). The Kennewick Man, a 9,000-year-old set of bones, caused legal disputes as tribes considered him an ancestor. Eventually, he was repatriated to the tribes. Scientists understand the tribes' hesitation to allow experimentation on their ancestors due to a history of mistreatment. NAGPRA aims to prevent such issues by protecting Native American remains. This is an incredibly tricky situation to navigate. I need to fix that. This is an incredibly rough situation to navigate, especially when it comes to situations like the Windover site, which are considered pretty ancient by anyone's standards and could be a purveyor for many native tribes in the area. To really understand the way NAGPRA operates in a situation like this, I'd like to draw your attention to another, arguably more famous, case study, the Kennewick Man. The Kennewick Man is a set of 9,000-year-old bones discovered in a river in Washington State. These bones were particularly archaeologically interesting because we are still trying to figure out how humans migrated to America and across America. And the hope was that the Kennewick Man, through DNA analysis and various other tests we can conduct, would help us understand a little bit more about where he came from and where he went. This study, this discovery did not happen in a vacuum, though. And many tribes in the area considered him to be a progenitor of their people and called him the Ancient One. There was a series of bitter legal arguments about what should happen to the Kennewick Man, whether he was truly considered an ancestor of these tribes, nonetheless being so old, or if we should give him back and repatriate him. In the end, he did get repatriated, and the tribes are working to rebury him, as we have made genetic connections to modern tribes in the United States. Many scientists argue that the tribes have a really good reason to be hesitant for science to observe and experiment on their ancestors. As previously said, there is quite a horrible history of remains and people's... The tribes have a good reason to be hesitant to allow science to observe and experiment on their ancestors. As previously stated, my peers do not exactly have a star history of treating them correctly. Many of the tests we conduct as archaeologists can be incredibly destructive, usually requiring us to grind down bone to conduct a DNA and nutrient analysis. Throughout history, anthropologists have raided recent graves in order to gain access to Native American remains and ship them off to various universities around the country in order to be studied. I shouldn't have to tell you how horrifying that is. I shouldn't have to tell you how incredibly disgusting and horrifying that is. And NAGPRA stands in place to stop these kinds of problems.