More anti-science activist legislation?

[crimresearch]

"Scientists hoping to study the ancient skeleton known as Kennewick Man are protesting legislation they say could block their efforts. They say a two-word amendment to a bill on American Indians would allow federally recognized tribes to claim ancient remains even if they cannot prove a link to a current tribe.
Scientists fear the bill, if enacted, could end up overturning a federal appeals court ruling that allows them to study the 9,300-year-old bones...

...Scientists say McCain's bill, with a two-word change, could nullify that ruling.

The change would add the words "or was" to a definition. It would then say that in the context of ancient remains, the term "Native American" refers to a member of a tribe or culture that is or was indigenous to the United States."

http://news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&ncid=753&e=1&u=/ap/20050408/ap_on_sc/kennewick_man&sid=84439559


What was the last mile marker on that slippery slope again?

[sackett]

Here's an op-ed on this subject:

http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/html/opinion/2002229762_riley04.html

When I hear Indians asserting that their beliefs justify the seizure of archaeological finds, some questions come to mind:

How do I know that a tribe really holds a particular belief? Do all tribe members believe the same thing? How old is that belief? What is the source for it? Given the
severe deracination almost all Indians have suffered, how can we know that these suspiciously Christian-sounding doctrines are really ancestral?

Another question: Even if a tribe or some part of it really holds religious beliefs in the sanctity of ancestral remains, why should that carry any weight? The U.S. Constitution prohibits the establishment of any religion. Allowing a tribe to destroy priceless archaeological finds for religious reasons sounds too much like the legal establishment of a cult.

What motivates tribal spokesmen (if that's who they really are) to interfere with archaeologists? Are they sincerely upset over the disposal of bones they didn't know
were there until somebody else found them, or do they just want to "dirty the white man's spring?"

I'm tired of ignorance demanding equal time. In most of Europe, archaeological finds are public property, period. It's time for the U.S. to adopt that policy, and to create
laws that enforce it.

[Cleon]

This really isn't an issue of "belief" as much as it's an issue of sovereignty.

Are NA nations sovereign? The US (and the European powers before it) has been signing treaties with various nations, and promptly breaking them, for literally centuries. Should the US no longer be held to them?

From the Native perspective, this is less about their "belief" that they were the first on the continent and more about asserting their sovereign rights.

For better or worse.

[crimresearch]

What sovereign right? The sovereign right to revisionist history?

This bill is about shutting down scientific inquiry in order to maintain power today.

[sackett]

I assume that there are some sordid state-level politics behind the Native American Graves Repatriation Act. No Indian tribe commands very many votes, but a good many tribes operate casinos, and can help a politico fund his campaign in a big way. Stroke the Indians and the Indians will stroke you. (This is not, of course, corruption in any shape or form; it is perfectly legal participation in the political life of the nation. Now I'll wipe the smirk off my face.)

Over the last fifteen years or so there has grown up a puzzling adulation for Indians here in the U.S., and, to a lesser degree, in Canada. The spirituality and even sanctity of Indian beliefs is unquestioned; the First Peoples must surely be Holy Peoples, possessors of some kind of marvelous knowledge that the rest of us can only hope to tune into. Needless to say, increasing numbers of Indians are shrewdly exploiting this misty-wispy fatuity - and I think it's great, as long as they're just selling spirit-catchers and sage bundles and fake-fur doodads to the New Agers. But if some of them try to impose their ludicrous made-up nativist crap - a helluva lot of it cribbed from George Bird Grinnel and Ernst Krober -- on men who seriously want to learn something, then here's one wasichu who'll saddle and ride against them

[Charlie Monoxide]

sackett ...
I'm tired of ignorance demanding equal time. In most of Europe, archaeological finds are public property, period. It's time for the U.S. to adopt that policy, and to create
Heck, I agree with you but the problem is that Europeans don't vote in American elections.

American Indians have a vested interest (under the guise of "belief") that they are the "one and only" people who came to North America way back. These old bones may add other "races" to that equation.

Charlie (kinda stating the obvious) Monoxide

[TragicMonkey]

It'll be interesting to see what'll happen when two different tribes lay claim to the same million-year-old set of bones, and want different burial sites for them. The court would have to ask each tribe to prove they were related to the bones.

Which would be bitch to do, without using vile science.