Norse Group Wants Bones Ruling Taken From Corps Engineers Partial To Nw Tribes Over Kennewick Man, Claim States

A small religious group filed a legal request Friday that the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers be barred from making a decision about the fate of the skeleton known as Kennewick Man.

The Asatru Folk Assembly doesn’t believe the corps can make an objective decision about the 9,300-year-old skeleton, attorney Michael Clinton said.

The remains were found last summer on land managed by the corps along the Columbia River at Kennewick.

Initially, the corps announced it would turn the skeleton over to a coalition of Northwest tribes for burial based on the native American Graves Protection and Repatriation Act.

This prompted eight prominent anthropologists and the Asatru Folk Assembly to sue the corps, seeking scientific study to determine the skeleton’s ancestry.

In June, U.S. Magistrate John Jelderks placed the lawsuits on hold and ordered the corps to conduct a thorough review of the issue. He ordered the corps to report on its new evaluation by Oct. 1.

Clinton said the corps has shown partiality toward the tribes, which consider the skeleton to be the sacred remains of an ancestor.

The corps has granted tribal leaders access to the skeleton for spiritual observances or to place newly found bones in the box where the remains are stored at the Battelle Pacific Northwest National Laboratory in Richland.

The Asatru Folk Assembly has received permission from the corps to hold a religious service in the repository next Wednesday.

The Assembly is based in Nevada City, Calif., claims 500 members and is one of numerous revivals of the old northern European religion of Asatru that was eventually replaced by Christianity.

Their claim to Kennewick Man is based on the alleged Caucasoid characteristics of the skull, Clinton said.