Roger Downey

I generally reserve one stars for books I can't finish, but it was tempting to give this only one. This book is poorly documented and the author is so obviously biased that I am unwilling to accept his unsupported word, and most of his words are unsupported. I would recommend this only to people who want to read absolutely everything written on the Kennewick controversy. Otherwise, there are plenty of better books. David Hurst Thomas' superb and profound Skull Wars: Kennewick Man, Archaeology, and the Battle for Native American Identity is much better than this, especially for the social/historical/political aspects that are its main focus. It has at least as much information about theories of populating the Americas as well. One might also read Elaine Dewar's Bones: Discovering the First Americans, which is seriously flawed, but still much better than this. She focuses more on various theories and archaeological evidence.

I have read Chatters' book, Ancient Encounters: Kennewick Man and the First Americans and Jeff Benedict's admiring account of Douglas Owsley, No Bone Unturned: The Adventures of a Top Smithsonian Forensic Scientist and the Legal Battle for America's Oldest Skeletons, and I specifically wanted a book to present the other side. Although Downey opposes both men, he utterly fails to articulate a coherent case for the opposite position. His rather random snipings at the plaintiffs' case don't qualify as a meaningful rebuttal. He relies on innuendo, broad generalizations and the implication that any right thinking person will agree with him, presumably even before opening the book. He doesn't appear to want to waste time convincing wrong-thinking people. He seems to regard it as a shocking abuse of the system that people who disagree with him use the usual venues of the courts, the press and the legislature to present their case. This reminds me of the many people I know of, from arch conservative to knee-jerk liberal who are loud in their praise of freedom of speech, until someone says something that they don't like.

Consider his contrasting treatment of Jeff Van Pelt of the Umatilla and James Chatters (the first anthropologist to examine the bones). Van Pelt presents his triumph over adversity mostly in the first person (I presume that the occasional third person insertions are paraphrases, although Downey doesn't tell us). There are no questions, fact-checking or comments from Downey. Fine, as far as it goes, but Chatters' life is recounted in the third person, carefully written to present him as a loser, with no source for most of the facts. Maybe Chatters is a loser, but I wouldn't take Downey's very biased word for it.

Downey presents disingenuous arguments that the Kennewick bones are insignificant or that all conflict is the result of Chatters' bungling. First he argues that there are at least a half dozen other sets of very old bones, as if this was a large number. As I understand it, there would be ten or twelve sets of bones, but others has been buried. Presumably if the Kennewick bones should be given to the Native Americans for reburial, so should the rest. He presents the case of a partial skeleton known as "Beulah" - Native Americans in Idaho gave permission for the remains to be studied before reburial. This, he argues shows that there is no problem finding an amicable solution. The "Beulah" case actually ended in a certain amount of acrimony, making it a dubious example for future cooperation. Whether or not Chatters handled the situation badly, it is also true that the 5 tribes made little effort to defuse the situation, perhaps by offering cooperation for concessions of their authority that might have created useful precedents in the future. A zero-sum game is always hazardous. If their religion absolutely forbids such compromises, then there is no basis at all for cooperation with their antagonists. Actually, Thomas' Skull Wars offers numerous hopeful examples Native Americans and scientists, some of them Native Americans, working together.

Still, these have-our-cake and eat-it-too solutions probably won't eliminate all conflict. Downey ought to know from his studies of the subject that new tests and new questions cause remains to be re-examined. If we rebury the bones, even after intensive study, we will lose some of what we might have known. BUT MAYBE THAT'S O.K. After all, we don't allow researchers to go to any extreme in the search of knowledge. (We wouldn't allow neurosurgeons to cut of people's hands just to let them practice reattachment.) Fascinating though all this is, do we really need to know it - would human culture crumble if Kennewick had never been found? The problem is, since Downey doesn't acknowledge the situation, he can't defend restraints on research.

Downey's inadequate considerations of the issues make me all the more impatient with his "novelistic" touches. In a book of 189 pages, do we really need four and a half to describe the events leading up to the teenagers wading in the river where they found the bones? I don't really care if they meant to get up early but slept in after a night of drinking. A paragraph or two would have sufficed.

The index is the best part of the book. With the exception of very famous entries, such as the FBI, most references to people places and things and followed by a brief annotation that is often enough to refresh one's memory, and in some cases supplies information that is not in the text.

Other than that, since this is short, if you insist on reading it, you won't waste much time.… (mere)