Kennewick Man

Kennewick Man is the name generally given to the skeletal remains of a prehistoric Paleoamerican man found on a bank of the Columbia River in Kennewick, Washington, on July 28, 1996. It is one of the most complete ancient skeletons ever found. Radiocarbon tests on bone have shown it to date from 8.9k to 9k calibrated years before present.

The discovery of the remains led to considerable controversy, as the Umatilla people and other tribes have wanted the remains returned to them for reburial under the federal Native American Graves Protection and Repatriation Act (NAGPRA). The law was designed to remedy long-standing wrongs done to tribes and to facilitate the return of human remains and cultural objects unlawfully obtained taken from them. In this case, the archaeologist who discovered the bones, James Chatters and Douglas Owsley an archaeologist at the Smithsonian, both asserted that the bones were unrelated to today's Native Americans but instead had features that more closely resembled Polynesian or Southeast Asian peoples, a finding that would exempt the bones from NAGPRA.