> When Dr. Willerslev and his colleagues looked at the Colville DNA, they found that it was the closest match to Kennewick Man among all the samples from Native Americans in the study.
> The DNA of the Colville tribe contains Asian-like pieces of DNA not found in Kennewick Man. They may have gained that genetic material by having children with the Arctic peoples.
> “We were hesitant,” said Mr. Boyd, of the Colville Tribes. “Science hasn’t been good to us.” Eventually, the Colville agreed to join the study; the other four tribes did not.
It's a shame that a history of distrust has developed. It sounds like we could extensively map out migration patterns of our pre-historic fellow humans, if their DNA were available. What nefarious purposes can you further by using someone else's DNA?
> What nefarious purposes can you further by using someone else's DNA?
Everything. From the Native American perspective being connected to the land is entire basis of their argument. If you show that the Native Americans of today are not the Native Americans of long long ago, then you can undermine the argument that they did not own the land that white people stole from them. In a twisted way, you can't steal land from a group of people that stole it in the first place.
Also, this is not about land, this is about mining, fishing and gaming rights and government recognition. If someone wanted to undermine any of that, they could show that the Native Americans do not own the land they sit on because they are not the True Native Americans. It is all to the Tribes advantage to make evidence of Kennewick man connection to non-Native Americans go away.
this is drivel. those rights are recognized because of treaties signed between bands of natives and the US government, not some nebulous conception of who was there first. if that were the case, americans of european descent would be ejected from america en masse. those groups were acting to respect the sanctity of their ancestors.
What nefarious purposes can you further by using someone else's DNA?
Perhaps you have not seen the movie "The last of his kind" which maps out how we hunted Indians to extinction or casually exposed them to deadly infections, like small pox, that wiped out entire tribes and then, afterwards, piled their skulls up in our museums to study so as to satisfy our scientific curiosity.
Why should Native Americans trust white scientists?
You're coming at this from a white man's perspective. "I can't possibly see what they have against knowing their history!"
Try coming at it from the Native American perspective. Almost every thing the white man has ever told them has been a lie. From trade deals to war treaties. The white man took their lands by force and trickery and soon had them living in reservations or participating in death marches.
Of course natives are going to be skeptical when white scientists tell them their history...history which they have their own cultural representation of. As modern western folk, we like to view the world with our scientific lens, and view what we see through it as the truth. But our science is no more truth than light bouncing off an object is the object itself.
Natives have their own account of their history. It's no more or less important than our account of their history, but our version is certainly going to be met with some (rightful) skepticism.
I'm trying to come from the perspective of someone who values data over no data. But you're right, I can't just shed my privileged perspective.
It seems like the point being indirectly communicated (somewhat by you, but also by other posters on this page), is that the concepts of "Aborigines Native American" and "Scientist" are incompatible. Like, it's a role that exists in our society, but not in theirs. Or something like that, their culture doesn't value that kind of information. I don't wish to offend out of my own ignorance of others' cultures.
I see where you're coming from, and have a few responses
> someone who values data over no data
I'm saying natives are most likely viewing passed down cultural history as data just as much as historic DNA, but in the case of DNA, the data comes from a historically untrustworthy source. I think it's sad that the suspicion exists between the "white man" and the native people. I have roots in both so I see the issue from your side as well: there's perfectly good data that could help natives tell their story, should they choose to use it.
> their culture doesn't value that kind of information
This is an interesting point. I'm actually not aware of how advanced science is in native cultures, or how much of a drive there is to have advanced science. I know in general there is a resistance to losing their culture. But maybe there are people in various tribes who would jump at the chance to access DNA information from a long lost ancestor.
> I don't wish to offend
I don't think you offended anyone at all as much sparked interesting conversation. A lot of what makes this issue interesting is that there are several different cultural perspectives looking at one thing from many different angles. I think in this case nobody is right or wrong, we all have access to the same information and are drawing separate conclusions.
There's a long running (century old) joke among First Nations people about everyone having their own personal anthropologist. It's a way to ease the pain of having scientists poke and prod into every little aspect of Natives personal lives and culture. When everything is taken from you, your women are sterilized (or just plain go missing), and every aspect of your life is examined & analyzed.. you tend to not trust white men, the government, or scientists.
And you are generally correct, science is incompatable with First Nations culture & society. Though that is changing somewhat with all the people who were forceably (& coerced) into moving away from the reservations to the city. There are also more young Natives going to college now. Though those young educated Natives are not going to go back home and teach their 90 y/o matriarch to trust the white man..
I am 1/32 Cherokee. I am sure I would not be embraced by Native Americans as one of them. But I also surely do not implicitly trust white scientists. Or any scientists.
I come from a long line of really paranoid people. This is why we live.
He said "it's a shame" not "they're being stupid". Because these physical anthropologists are probably not part of some grand conspiracy against Native Americans or anyone else. They probably just want to know how humans originally migrated into the Americas. Because, you know, they're scientists, and scientists are curious.
The problem with your remark is the implicit assumption that there is more "shame" in the lack of trust Native Americans have for whites than in the atrocities committed by whites that engendered that lack of trust, as if scientific curiosity justifies sweeping aside their very legitimate concerns and the long history of genocide here.
Anyway, I do not plan to participate further in this discussion. My absence is not to be read as tacit admission of having lost the argument or some such. My concern is the HN algorithm. I don't want it dumped from the front page because excessive replies from me trip some unthinking, automatic algorithm switch.
> The problem with your remark is the implicit assumption that there is more "shame" in the lack of trust Native Americans have for whites than in the atrocities committed by whites that engendered that lack of trust
I don't see any reason to infer that message from the remark in question. The remark is about the refusal and distrust, and notes that the distrust is a shame. In neither states nor implies anything comparative about the relation between that and any other situation that may or may not also be a shame, including, inter alia, those that contributed to the one being discussed.
> Are they satisfied with their current histories?
Probably. At the very least, for most of them refining detailed factual accounts of their history is not high on the list of needs they'd like to see addressed.
> Do they not really care much to know how their ancestors moved across the continents?
Why would they? I would suggest that most people don't care much about that, regardless of race/ethnicity. Its just that most people don't have a history which creates a perceived risk associated with going along with what it takes to help satisfy other people's curiosity about this kind of thing.
You can design viruses that the general population is more resistant to. The United States is not a stranger to germ warfare in pursuit of its interests.
(From the article): "[T]he Havasupai Indians of Arizona won a court case in 2010 to take back blood samples that they argued were being used for genetic tests to which they didn’t consent."
Personally, I don't know that I would care if somebody was running genetic tests on my blood. However, the idea that some scientist somewhere might learn something about you that you don't know does creep some people out.
I understand that white supremacists were using the Kennewick man to prove whites somehow "owned" America first and that one particular supremacist "religion" (I won't name it) was suing to keep them if they were of European ancestry.
There was a claim that evidence of earlier human habitation than the Bering Strait migration had been found in Brazil [1]. I am not sure how the evidence has held-up to further scrutiny (there are issues surrounding dating of the petroglyphs found), but this article [2] has some discussion and nice pictures of the caves and petroglyphs.
An independent migration to S. America, most likely from Africa, is obviously possible, even if that population later died out. Consider that Madagascar was initially populated by people from the South China Sea, a claim initially met with much incredulity.
Regarding the whole burial aspect -- the guy was already buried! With a ceremony according to his own religious beliefs as he practiced them, not whatever religion descendents 8 millennia distant currently practice. Shouldn't they just put him back where they found him?
I think this is the first time we've made a url swap like this, but given that there is genuine news about the same topic, it seems better than burying it as a dupe like we normally would.
I was living in the Tri-cities when Kennewick Man was found. We were living in a rental in Richland, but my husband's duty station was the Kennewick recruiting office behind the mall. I don't normally pay much attention to the news, but this was exciting stuff. Also, I have a smidgeon of Native American blood (Cherokee, in my case) so news about Kennewick Man hits close to home for me.
> The DNA of the Colville tribe contains Asian-like pieces of DNA not found in Kennewick Man. They may have gained that genetic material by having children with the Arctic peoples.
> “We were hesitant,” said Mr. Boyd, of the Colville Tribes. “Science hasn’t been good to us.” Eventually, the Colville agreed to join the study; the other four tribes did not.
It's a shame that a history of distrust has developed. It sounds like we could extensively map out migration patterns of our pre-historic fellow humans, if their DNA were available. What nefarious purposes can you further by using someone else's DNA?