Their response to the scientific theories about Kennewick Man’s morphology was measured but clear: they didn’t care what the bones looked like in the eyes of Western physical anthropology.

He was ancient.

He was found on their land.

He was their ancestor.

That was enough.

But even within mainstream science, away from the racist fringes, there was genuine and legitimate debate about what Kennewick Man’s skeletal features meant.

Some researchers agreed with Chatters’s initial impression that the skull showed unusual morphology for the region.

They suggested that Kennewick Man might represent evidence of population diversity in ancient North America — that the continent’s earliest inhabitants might have been more varied than the conventional model of a single migration from Northeast Asia suggested.

Other researchers were skeptical of the morphological analysis altogether.

They pointed out that physical anthropologists’ ability to estimate ancestry from skull shape alone was unreliable, particularly for ancient populations that might not resemble any modern group.