David Hurst Thomas

This book uses the controversy over the Kennewick Man as an entry point to a discussion about the different ways that Native Americans and non-native Americans understand and control American history.

In the 1990s, human remains were discovered in Kennewick, Washington. The archaeologist who first assessed the remains was certain, based on the shape of the skull, that they belonged to a white man, and the remains were assumed to be relatively recent. But the further discovery of an arrowhead show more embedded in the skeleton, and carbon dating of the skeleton to almost 9000 years ago, threw the scientific community into crisis. Was he white, and if so, what was he doing here so long ago? Does that mean that white people have been in the Americans for far longer than we thought? If so, what does that mean for Native American claims to be the first peoples of the Americas? This discovery happened not long after legislation was passed that gave Native Americans control over remains of any Native American bodies found in archaeological excavations, and the Kennewick Man put those laws to the test: could the contemporary tribes of the area claim kinship with a 9,000-year-old skeleton? White archaeologists and historians wanted access to the skeleton, and thought that the scientific value of what we might learn from the remains was more important than Native American control of their own heritage.

There are a lot of complex issues at stake here. Thomas provides a history of anthropology and archaeology in the US and Canada, showing the deeply racist history of these fields. He provides an overview of relationships between Native Americans and Europeans, focusing on how Europeans have perceived Indians and the political uses of Native American culture.

In the final chapters, Thomas gives examples of situations where Native Americans and European descendants have been able to work together on archaeological sites, to both learn about the past and be respectful of the culture of the people involved. He also explores situations where Native American oral tradition, generally scoffed at by "science", has been proven to be correct by archaeological evidence. show less

In July 1996, a human skeleton washed out of a bank of the Columbia River and reignited a 500 year controversy about the handling of human remains in this country. Archaeologists dubbed the skeleton "Kennewick Man" and advocated scientific analysis with the goal of tracking the origins of Native Americans. Many Native Americans are adamant that such analysis constitutes desecration and disrespect for their ancestors and cultures. David Hurst Thomas, an archaeologist sympathetic to both show more sides, traces the roots of the Kennewick Man debate, exposing the prejudices that have dominated American anthropology since its inception. Thomas is a fine writer and his subject matter is fascinating. Expect to be astounded, angry, inspired and, ultimately, hopeful that all parties in the debate can proceed with mutual respect
Reviewed by: Cathy show less

TBD - draft review:

Compare to modern historians, in the 1970s, Axtell, Neal Salisbury, Francis Jennings, dissatisfied with the view of either primitive cultures or "balanced with Nature".

“Indians were seen as trivial, ineffectual patsies,” Salisbury, a historian at Smith College, says of the history actual taught to susceptible children in the United States.

But does a whole continent of patsies make sense, really?

By the 1990s, we have witnessed a tsunami of inquiry into the show more interactions between natives and newcomers in the era when they faced each other as relative equals. “No other field in American history has grown as fast,” according to Joyce Chaplin, a Harvard historian, in 2003. This 1994 volume is part of that tsunami.

It is true that Indian societies collapsed in the "Colonial Period". This had everything to do with the natives themselves, and with geography, and pathology. It was certainly to religiously ordained or technologically determined.

I like how Salisbury put it: “When you look at the historical record, it’s clear that Indians were trying to control their own destinies.” Even though neither the Indians nor the Colonials and Kings predicted the consequences. show less

An excellent overview of the history of the archaeology and anthropology of American Indians, inspired by the controversy over Kennewick Man. This is an embarrassing history for white scientists, but it's one that needs to be told, and this is a creditable effort, for all that it's seventeen years old now.