THE THIRD TRANSFORMATION: THE LEGAL FRAMEWORK FOR REPATRIATION

The Kennewick case exposed significant gaps in NAGPRA’s provisions for very ancient remains, and eventually led to legislative changes that strengthened tribal rights.

The 2016 amendment to NAGPRA that enabled Kennewick Man’s repatriation established that human remains found in the United States could be considered Native American without requiring a specific demonstrated affiliation to a modern tribe.

This change closed the legal loophole that the scientists’ lawsuit had exploited and significantly strengthened the ability of tribes to claim very ancient remains found in their traditional territories.

This legal evolution has had lasting consequences.

Since 2017, tribes across the country have been able to make successful repatriation claims for remains that previously might have been denied on affiliation grounds.

The Kennewick case, despite being a painful and prolonged ordeal for the tribal communities involved, ultimately helped produce a stronger legal framework for Indigenous rights to their ancestral dead.

THE FOURTH TRANSFORMATION: THE RELATIONSHIP BETWEEN SCIENCE AND INDIGENOUS KNOWLEDGE

Perhaps the most profound change wrought by the Kennewick case is the most difficult to measure: the slow, painful, still-incomplete transformation in the relationship between Western science and Indigenous knowledge systems.

The case forced a confrontation with a pattern that had characterized the relationship between archaeology/anthropology and Native communities for over a century: scientists claiming the authority to define, interpret, and control the Native past, while the living descendants of that past were marginalized, excluded, or directly opposed.