But, Some Animals Are More Equal Than Others...

Some Stories Count More Than Others

By MARK TRAHANT
SEATTLE POST-INTELLIGENCER EDITORIAL PAGE EDITOR

How do you believe the world was created? Well, I love these stories, the creation stories, and I have heard many told. The world was created with the help of a turtle, a coyote or a raven. People were formed from dust, crawled out from under the earth or dropped from the heavens above. The world was formed in an instant, seven days or millions of years.

The explanations of who we are and how we came to be vary from clan to clan, from language to language, from people to people.

President Bush last week told reporters from Texas that the notion of "intelligent design" should be taught side by side with the theory of evolution. Education, he said, is all about exposing people to ideas. But Bush's side-by-side comparison divides the world into only two camps. There's science and the Judeo-Christian tradition incorporated into what they're calling "intelligent design."

It's too simple to claim this division is only about science versus religion because there are too many variations. Is it all science, even all evolution theory, that's in question? Or just parts? And, at the other end of the spectrum, is it all religion? Or just the creation stories from the literal truth of the Bible? To be blunt: Do we as a country value only Christian stories?

There are practical applications to these questions. Congress enacted the Native American Graves Protection and Repatriation Act in 1990. This law gave specific rights to lineal descendants, Native Americans and Native Hawaiians to human remains, sacred objects buried next to those remains and other culturally significant material. The reason for the law was gruesome science: Army doctors collected Indian "specimens" shortly after battles and the bodies were sent to museums for study. We even had a president -- Thomas Jefferson -- who participated in grave robbing. All told, the federal government, museums and other educational institutions had amassed between 100,000 and 200,000 American Indian remains for study.

The 1990 law was the country concluding that its past behavior was immoral.

"In the past 15 years, museums and federal agencies have announced their willingness to repatriate the remains of 31,093 individuals," Paul Hoffman, deputy assistant secretary of the Interior Department, said at a Senate hearing last week. "Another 111,000 human remains were listed as 'culturally unidentifiable.' "

That brings us to the skeletal remains found near Kennewick. The U.S. 9th Circuit Court of Appeals ruled that there must be a "significant relationship" to an existing tribe and the relationship must go "beyond features common to all humanity."

That ruling led Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz., to sponsor legislation that would clarify in law the assumption that the human remains were ancient tribal people (unless it was proven not to be the case).

"If you pass the proposed amendment, you will forever block the study of ancient people who have no relationship to living Amerindians," according to testimony of Paula Barran and Alan Schneider of the Portland-based, "Friends of America's Past."

"Please do not steal the past. It belongs to the scholars of today and the scholars of tomorrow, and to all people everywhere," Barran and Schneider said.

That's it. This is the essence, the legend that scholars own the past. It belongs to them.

This time the Bush administration sided with the scientists -- tribal creation stories aren't equal with the ones from the Bible.

But in a funny way: The science-versus-religion argument takes on a new dimension in this particular case because science has its own theology, a fundamental, literal interpretation of the world. The scientists and lawyers who argue for complete control over ancient human remains assume that tribal people have nothing to add to scientific discourse.

Remember the 111,000 "unidentifiable" human remains?

Those unknown American Indian dead likely could be identified if museums, scientists and tribes would work together, said Walter Echo-Hawk of the Native American Rights Fund. "However, that opportunity may never arise if those dead are excluded from consultation ... " because the law does not directly apply to them.

Without McCain's proposed amendment, museums would be free to make "unilateral determinations" about a culturally unidentifiable human remain.

It's important to remember that the record of science is awful. I remember interviewing a Northern Cheyenne historian some years ago who told me about walking into a museum warehouse looking for a sacred object from his clan. He described what it was like when he realized that he was surrounded by thousands of boxes of human remains, people buried in a government warehouse. His relatives were there, too.

The repatriation of ancestoral remains is not about science versus religion to me. It's about respect for living people who have the right to determine that their relations are treated with human dignity. But respect remains an illusion when even now the government and museums warehouse tens of thousands of human remains.

How do you believe the world was created? Your answer might not matter, because in America some stories count more than others.

Mark Trahant is editor of the editorial page. E-mail: marktrahant@seattlepi.com.