In addition to demanding recognition of Native peoples’ presence in the contemporary scene, repatriation also necessitates recollection of the deep time of indigenous occupation of the western hemisphere. For much of the past century, scientists were fixated on Beringia—the area in and around the Bering Strait—and the crossing of peoples into the Americas from Asia. As Dakota scholar Vine Deloria Jr. observed, “Scientists . . . ,are committed to the view that Indians migrated to this country over an imaginary Bering Straits bridge, which comes and goes at the convenience of the scholar requiring it to complete his or her theory” (read more).
Recent archaeological discoveries have shown that the original Bering thesis vastly oversimplifies the peopling of this continent. The Bluefish Caves, located in northern Yukon near the Alaska border, contain animal bones associated with human habitation dating to some 30,000 years ago.
Striations on a mandible bone from the Bluefish site, demonstrating human presence. ((Lauriane Bourgeon/University of Montreal, for Archaeology, January 17, 2017).
It was only recently that these remains could be dated with such accuracy, and their antiquity suggests first and foremost that the Bering Strait was a homeland in its own right—much more than a land bridge to a future “North America” (Read more).
A dig at Monte Verde, Chile.
Signs of human occupation that stretch back 14, 000 years have been uncovered in caves in eastern Oregon. In Monte Verde Chile, archaeologists dated fires associated with stone tools to some 18, 500 years ago, pushing back the peopling of the Americas by another 4000 years (Read more). Along Buttermilk Creek in Texas, layers of clay have preserved some 19,000 pre-Clovis artifacts. Among them, “small blades bearing tiny wear marks from cutting bone to a polished chunk of hematite, an iron mineral commonly used in the Paleolithic world for making a red pigment” (Read more).
Mastodon bones showing breakage consistent with human use of tools.
Perhaps most startling of all, 130, 000 year old mastodon bones uncovered in 1992 during a southern California freeway project have been re-examined to provide evidence for what scientists in a recent issue of Nature describe as “the presence of an unidentified species of Homo at the CM site during the last interglacial period (MIS 5e; early late Pleistocene), indicating that humans with manual dexterity and the experiential knowledge to use hammerstones and anvils processed mastodon limb bones for marrow extraction and/or raw material for tool production” (Read more).
What is most important about these revisions to older, conservative estimate of the presence of humans here—usually placed at 12, 000 years BP—is that Native communities have been saying they’ve been here for a lot longer for a long time. It is the way that these new empirical discoveries support tribal oral traditions that perhaps has the most impact on repatriation issues.
The best recent example of this comes from British Columbia, where ancient DNA from archeological sites in the Prince Rupert area of B.C. confirmed the Metlakatla First Nation’s assertion that they had lived in the region for much longer than scientists would accept. As reported by the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation (CBC), Barbara Petzelt, an archaeologist with the Metlakatla First Nation who worked on the project sums up the situation perfectly:’It’s nice to have it explained in a way western culture can understand.” As with the remains of the Ancient One in Kenewick, Oregon, it sometimes takes the empiricism of western science to validate the oral tradition so that repatriations and tribal land claims can go forward. Again Barbara Petzelt explains, “Science is starting to be used to basically corroborate what we’ve been saying all along” (Read more).
Most scientists are taught that those who are best suited to ask scientific questions are those who are least invested . . . But nobody is least invested.
The CBC story concludes with some observations by Kimberly TallBear, associate professor at the University of Alberta’s Native Studies:
I think it’s good, and I think it’s progress . . . But Western knowledge … [is] privileged over Indigenous knowledge . . . Most scientists are taught that those who are best suited to ask scientific questions are those who are least invested . . . But nobody is least invested. Nobody is asking those questions in a cultural vacuum.
Whether or not the marks on the mastodon bones under a freeway in California turn out to be signs of human occupation 130, 000, the understanding of the peopling of this continent and the creation of homelands by indigenous peoples should always acknowledge and respect the traditions of their descendants who, living here today, have carried with them stories and song that are often every bit as accurate as an electron microscope or a mass spectrometer.
