July 22, 2004

• Crap! than with American Indians)
• ha ha ha! Dead Ainu & typos are teh funny.
• But I still love you.
• I used to live in Kennewick. Every time I hear of this story and look at the photo of where the Kennewick man was found, I get a chill. My kids and I used to fish and swim at that spot. I can't help but think about how creepy it would have been to find a human skull while there.
• I think the American Indians should have hired Leonard Peltier and the White Man should hired Dirty Harry and I think they should have had a duel in the middle of the desert. But that wouldn't have worked because they'd both end up drinking listerene and passing out in the hot hot sun. Of course, that's where I would come in...
• Ah yes, I recall a history lesson about the Hairy Ainu.* Ainu I remembered that tribe from somewhere .... *It may be politically incorrect to call them that now.
• My brother Esau was an hairy man, but I am a smooth man. --from Beyond the Fringe, best I recall it
• I used to have an hairy ainu until I discovered Nair®
• *buries Nostrildamus alive, puts up sign: "do not excavate until 11204 AD"*
• Federal laws about burial remains put politics before science.
• More about hairy men.
• My brother Esau woz a pu'ru-huru terror.
• See, what has happened is that very sensible laws have hit their grey area. Native people were sick of archeologists digging up their recent remains without permission. I have a friend from Alaska who tells me about how archeologists keep trespassing after being explicitly asked not to excavate Aleutian villages from which the Aleuts were forcibly transported during the second world war. They are bitter about the transportation (which divided familes, and left many to starve), and they are pissed off at the archeologists digging away at someone's house or grave who is only recently dead. If archeologists were pulling up churchyards, non-natives would feel just the same way. (Actually, in the Reason article, they mention how in 1976, a group of Caucasian skeletons were reburied, while the only Native one was sent to a museum - this was commmon.) So the law got written - you want to play with human remains, you have to get permission from the ostensible decendants. So no more digging up or playing with granny's bones. But then the question is: is there a statute of limitations on decendanthood? In Britain, I have heard that bodies are considered fair game so long as they are pre-1500 (though this may have changed). The thought is that so far back in time, it isn't really someone's immediate family. Whereas the US gov't put no such time limit - and we find ourselves in the situation with Kennewick man. I do, however, find the argument "The bones look Caucasian, so he can't be native" to be stupid, and not really relevant. A) it's based on a reconstruction of the face, which is itself sketchy, b) I have read places where he is described as looking like "Jean-Luc Picard" - but Jean-Luc Picard actually could pass as Native, and c) there are tons of native people who don't look stereotypically native - and race is a very relative concept. And even if he were Ainu, or even a really early Viking, he still might be their ancester - short of DNA testing on the whole tribe, there would be no way to know. But the point is that there must be a balance between scientific curiosity and being respectful to other people's rights and beliefs. The Europeans don't have so many arguments, mainly because the archeologists and universities are staffed by Europeans. But American Indians have a history of being treated very badly by white archeologists, museums and universities (don't get me started on the artefact dealers - they deserve nothing but the stake) - and are understandably pissed about it. They are sick of having their grandparents dug up, and their religious artefacts stolen, all in the name of "scientific knowledge," which somehow always seems to benefit other people - namely dealers and museums. The truth is, the only scientific answers Kennewick man might bring are about Native history. If they would rather that they hold his bones and don't want to share, that's their business. Maybe they would like make a museum themselves, so they can get some money and be able to afford to send their kids to university to study Native history. Or maybe they are just pissed and want to keep it from the arcehologists - but it's their right. I say this as a historian who really likes prying into people's private lives - we don't have unlimited rights. We loose so much knowledge everyday that we don't need to go bothering people to find something to study. If you really love native history, start with the people who are there and work with them. If they want to share their history, they will. /rant mostly inspired by Reason article, which like usual is far from reasonable
• Did the first Americans come from, er, Australia? Link from Dienekes' Anthropology Blog.