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Framing of Kennewick Man against the Backdrop of a Scientific and Cultural Controversy Cynthia-Lou Coleman and Erin V. Dysart Science Communication 2005; 27; 3 DOI: 10.1177/1075547005278609 The online version of this article can be found at: http://scx.sagepub.com/cgi/content/abstract/27/1/3

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SCIENCEDysart 10.1177/1075547005278609 Coleman, COMMUNICATION / KENNEWICK MAN

Framing of Kennewick Man against the Backdrop of a Scientific and Cultural Controversy CYNTHIA-LOU COLEMAN ERIN V. DYSART Portland State University

The authors examine news coverage surrounding the unearthing of an ancient skeleton known as Kennewick Man. The skeleton was the focus of legal arguments from 1996 to 2004, with a group of scientists countering Indian claims that the skeleton should be rightfully repatriated to the North American tribes. The authors take a case-study approach, examining the theoretical underpinnings of scientific and cultural rationality in contemporary ways of knowing and linking them with communitarian ethics offered by Clifford Christians and others. Through an examination of mass media framing, the authors show how coverage has resulted in a discourse that has limited discussion to a division of rationalities. In this case, rationalist and cultural values unfold with scant attendance to ethical or pluralistic considerations. Keywords: American Indian; cultural rationality; ethics; framing; Kennewick Man; mass communication; NAGPRA; Native American; news; pluralism; reporting; science coverage; scientific rationality; sources

Science enjoys a celebrated status in American society. Harkening back to Enlightenment ideals, science and its technological progeny are lauded as the path to human deliverance: problems of the physical and political worlds Authors’Note: Address correspondence to Cynthia-Lou Coleman, Department of Communication, Portland State University, P.O. Box 751, Portland, OR 97207-0751; phone: 503-725-5368; fax: 503-725-5385; e-mail: [email protected]. Science Communication, Vol. 27 No. 1, September 2005 3-26 DOI: 10.1177/1075547005278609 © 2005 Sage Publications

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may best be surmounted for the benefit of humankind through the systematic application of reason. Reason, rationality, empiricism, positivism, and objectivity provide the epistemological lenses through which values unfold, policies are struck, and mass communication messages are framed. One need look no further than mass media scholarship to find that scientific and technological topics are most often presented as progressive, necessary, inherently beneficial, and correct (see, e.g., Nelkin 1987). And it is in this spirit that we present an exploratory case study offered as one avenue for examining the transparent and hidden values underlying coverage of scientific rationality and cultural rationality in the discovery, recovery, and court battles over Kennewick Man, a nine-thousand-year-old skeleton. We first present the theoretical underpinnings of scientific and cultural rationality in contemporary ways of knowing and link them with communitarian ethics offered by Clifford Christians and others. We then examine scientific and cultural rationality within the theoretical and empirical models of science coverage and framing research. We provide the background of the Kennewick Man story and show, through an examination of framing, how coverage has resulted in a discourse that has limited discussion to a division of rationalities. We conclude by viewing the Kennewick case through an ethical lens, fusing Christians’s and our own approaches to articulate mass communication processes and theory.

Enlightenment and the Cultural-Rational Rift Much of the academic interest that has focused on news coverage of scientific controversies has engendered plentiful attention, from “designer babies” to the “devil’s bargain” of nuclear power (see, e.g., Gamson and Modigliani 1989; Nerlich, Johnson, and Clarke 2003). Such coverage, we argue, offers a prism to view the construction of arguments that pit scientific rationality against what Plough and Krimsky (1987) referred to as “cultural rationality.” However, we argue that the two pillars under study—scientific rationality and cultural rationality—are misnomers. Science is culturally bound, and culture is not without empirical dimensions. In other words, both pillars embrace attributes that simultaneously infuse rationality and culture— Gemeinschaft and Gesellschaft—values, tradition, empiricism, subject, and object. Critics drift toward a perilous phenomenological chasm when they impose a separation between scientific and cultural rationality. Yet, as we will demonstrate, journalism embodies this divide. News stories about science and technology are often framed as rationality versus intuition or facts


Coleman, Dysart / KENNEWICK MAN

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versus faith. Journalists treat science as though it were devoid of values, often approaching cultural views as though they were devoid of reason and using news frames that mirror such views. Such frames permeate coverage and reflect the Gemeinschaft-Gesellschaft bonds proposed by Tönnies ([1887] 1988). Recall that the Gemeinschaft rubric encompasses kinship and communitarian values that spring from traditional “ways of knowing,” while the Gesellschaft frame favors the progressive tenets of industry and the Enlightenment. In coverage of conflicts that brings forth the GemeinschaftGesellschaft divide, modern news stories are infused with a progressive perspective that overshadows the traditional and cultural, and journalistic norms not only mirror the divide but also elevate science to the highest status. All this makes sense from the Cartesian view that faith, values, and culture are separate from rationalism and that rationalism is operationalized as “science”; that the subjective is oppositional to the objective; and that ideas should be “as clean as arithmetic” (Christians, Ferre, and Fackler 1993, 20). The effect of separating scientific rationality from cultural rationality issues forth a sort of cognitive superiority that results in a marginalization of views seen as nonscientific and hence nonrational. Halm (2003) observed, “It is axiomatic that Western science and technology anchored its claims to cultural and ontological superiority thereby providing both the cognitive and material means of its imperialism” (p. 156). Native American scholars Vine Deloria Jr. and Daniel R. Wildcat (2001) noted that the world painted by Western science is “disjointed, sterile and emotionless” and constrains “any discussion of our human experience and life as part of the processes involving power(s), which are irreducible to discrete objects or things” (pp. 2, 15). Contemporary journalism, illuminating the ideals of the Hutchins Commission, mirrors the Cartesian ideals of issuing forth “clean” facts with a truthful, comprehensive, and intelligent account of the day’s events (Christians, Ferre, and Fackler 1993, 4). Clifford Christians and his colleagues have offered that an ethical vantage point provides a more salient epistemological platform for critiquing coverage and, indeed, for effective communitarian reporting. That is, Christians has long asserted that the incorporation of ethical guidelines in reporting would enrich coverage and expand readers’ and viewers’ understanding of the breadth of contemporary social issues. Rather than using the standard ethical measures (such as a utilitarian approach), Wilkins and Christians (2001) imagined a more fundamental premise borrowed from philosophical anthropology: that of basing analyses (and ultimately journalistic coverage) in the very humanness of being. Christians and Traber (1997) noted, “The only legitimate option is an ethics that is culturally inclusive rather than biased toward Western hegemony” (p. 5). In summary, Christians and his colleagues argued for a repositioning of journalism from


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its individualistic tenets to more communitarian values and tethering objective reporting devoid of context to community ties rich in pluralistic diversity. Pluralism, McQuail (1987) noted, offers a “complex of groups and interests, none of them predominant all the time” (p. 85) in news coverage. Central to democratic pluralism within a political dimension is that the diversity of interest groups that participate in a sharing of resources protects against the tyranny of the majority (Held 1987). Such pluralistic thinking, although a driving force behind journalistic values outlined in the report of the Hutchins Commission, appears instead to have transmogrified into an oppositional dualism in contemporary news coverage. In other words, pluralistic coverage would reflect a variety of sources and voices of community interests, not just “official” sources or those with the power, access, and ability to influence news choices (Held 1987; Tichenor, Donohue, and Olien 1980).

Coverage of Science in the News Communicating science has carved its own niche in academic circles, in which scholars pursue research devoted to the public understanding of science, science literacy, science journalism, and coverage of scientific issues (for a review, see Weigold 2001). In the realm of science and communication, particular attention has been devoted to news coverage, especially the framing of science information. The concept of framing, though vital in contemporary mass media studies, suffers somewhat from a tradition of loosely knit explications and operationalizations. D’Angelo (2002) offers some clarity by parsing and describing three distinct paradigms within the framing research program— cognitive, constructionist, and critical—each with its own theoretical underpinnings. Our research is guided by the constructionist paradigm, which emphasizes the interplay of news framing with the broader public discourse about any given issue. In this perspective, when a journalist selects “a central organizing idea for making sense of relevant events,” thereby “suggesting what is at issue,” he or she engages in framing (Gamson and Modigliani 1989, 3; Tankard 2001). Consistent with the journalistic ethic advocated by Christians and colleagues, researchers in the constructionist paradigm hold that journalists have the opportunity when drafting stories to “both reflect and add to the ‘issue culture’ of the topic” (Gamson and Modigliani 1989, quoted in D’Angelo 2002, 877). Unfortunately, the opportunity to enrich public discourse by infusing multiple perspectives is often at odds with the practical circumstances of



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journalism. Media professionals commonly adhere to work routines to efficiently deal with the fast-paced professional and economic pressures of journalism (e.g., filling a newspaper each day with timely and compelling information such that other media outlets in the market do not gain favor; see, e.g., Bennett 1980; Dunwoody 1980; Graber 2004; Nelkin 1987; Reese, Gandy, and Grant 2001; Tuchman 1980). These routines or techniques, which some researchers consider framing devices, combine to shape or frame coverage in such a way that some views are privileged over others. Occasionally in framing research, there is a distinction between frames and framing devices: frames constitute the thematic content, while devices are structural items such as headlines or leads. However, “frames” and “devices” are not always operationally distinct, and in our research, we favor a liberal examination of framing, jointly discussing frames with devices. Specifically, our discussion addresses issue selection; the use of particular sources, language and metaphors; and central themes (Coleman and Corbitt 2003; Gitlin 1980; Gozzi 1999; Landsman 1987; Miller and Riechert 2001; Nelkin 1987; Reese 1990; Tammpuu 2004; Tankard and Ryan 1974). One significant framing device that bears discussion here is reliance on official sources. Sources often take a primary role in shaping coverage, and researchers in the constructionist paradigm hold that “news organizations limit the range of information about a topic because journalists judge that there are few credible sponsors (i.e., sources) about the topic” (D’Angelo 2002, 877). Moreover, there is a “tendency among a significant number of journalists to limit themselves to single sources in reporting science stories. . . . Even in cases where controversy would seem to demand multiple sources, a sizeable proportion of journalists may use very few” (Stocking 1999, 25-26). Nelkin (1987) observed that elite sources, particularly scientists, are given time and space to speak as experts without much scrutiny. Science is a “superior form of knowledge, and those who have reached its pinnacle have some special insight into every problem” (Nelkin 1987, 21). Often, scientists as sources have the freedom to set the parameters for debate by defining the nature of the problem at hand. Defining an issue, Tankard (2001, 96-97) observed, may take the form of a media-constructed frame, which can be likened to a “magician’s sleight of hand” in directing attention to one particular point while obscuring another. Scientists are likely to be especially successful in shaping coverage by serving as single or primary sources for several closely related reasons. First, journalists typically prefer sources in positions of authority because of their perceived trustworthiness (Gans 1979). This favors scientists who are automatically deemed experts (McGinn 1979).1 Second, journalists lack the time and/or the specialized knowledge required to interpret scientific matters


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critically and therefore must defer to expert analysis (Dornan 1990). Third, scientists are revered as neutral purveyors of the truth and therefore suit the journalistic norm of objectivity (Logan 2001; Nelkin 1987). As this interplay between science and journalism suggests, there are several well-developed frames that describe news coverage of scientific matters. In examining science reporting of recombinant DNA, Altimore (1982, 26) described a scientific or technical frame as “comprising statements that restrict the discussion to scientific matters such as the immediate safety of research...or statements concerned with projected societal benefits accruing from the research” (p. 26). Invoking this frame dictates that publics are mere onlookers and that scientists are among the few qualified possessors of certain knowledge. Plough and Krimsky (1987) revived Habermas, explaining that risk communication, which overwhelmingly concerns technology, may “exacerbate antagonisms between the technosphere [the culture of experts] and the demosphere [popular culture]” (p. 7). Indeed, when news stories are cast within a frame of scientific rationality, there is little regard for social context: detached, scientific views are valued. Mirroring the positivist frame in this manner, a premium is placed on the objective, measurable, and verifiable (Priest 1995). Thus, the range of discourse is limited and such subjective concerns as questions of ethics are delegitimized: they fall outside the rational decision-making frame. Although objectivity is an extolled journalistic virtue, framing often results in the subtle favoring of one perspective over another (Scheufele 1999) and the unconscious presentation of enduring values (Gans 1979). Given that in industrialized societies, science enjoys “pride of place” as the most “legitimate” or rational approach to understanding the world, it follows that scientific perspectives are favored in American journalism (Lievrouw 1990). Finally, scientific perspectives may enjoy preferential treatment because they are inherently attractive to journalists, reflecting values that resonate with journalistic credos of subjectivity and objectivity. There are a number of similarities between the disciplines of science and journalism that are likely to influence coverage on some level. As Reese (1990) summarized, Both science and journalism are empirical information-gathering activities that have developed learnable routines for their practitioners. Both scientists and journalists are presumed to be dispassionate observers of the world, guided primarily by their observations. . . . Both science and journalism are guided by a positivist faith in empiricism, the belief that the external world can be successfully perceived and understood. (Pp. 392-93)



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The linkages between the enterprises of journalism and scientific empiricism are much deeper than routines. Christians, Ferre, and Fackler (1993) traced contemporary journalism’s underpinnings to the extrication of the individual from the community, in a Gesellschaft sense. The individual, rather than the community, has become the centerpiece of the American democratic process, guided by the confluence of reductionist rationality with the unencumbered, autonomous self. Christians, Ferre, and Fackler posited that autonomous journalism mirrors the autonomous self, whereby reporters stand apart from the communities they serve, free from constraint. Press freedom “implied loyalty to the ideal of objectivity rather than service to the local community” (p. 35). The authors entwined Lockean philosophy with Jeffersonian politics, whereby the Enlightenment meets the Fourth Estate. For Jefferson, the press was like the empowered individual: rational; autonomous; and free from history, religion, and superstition (pp. 26-27). In summary, if “science” is the embodiment of rationality, then science’s “Other” (cultural rationality) reflects ideology considered subjective, primitive, or moral. Coleman (1995) suggested that the cultural and scientific rationality rift is an invented dualism mirrored in coverage. She argued that both encompass their own rationality, and reporters risk grave errors in assuming that science is without values and that culture is without rationality. Still, many scholars have argued that the “nature” of news coverage compels writers to construct such conflicts in Manichean terms and that such routine reporting severely limits pluralistic coverage, coverage that would reflect a multiplicity (rather than a duality) of voices or claims. Such is the norm of journalistic objectivity: one interpretation, outlook, possibility, or solution must be balanced by another (Gans 1979). Thus, dichotomized coverage (what we call “oppositional dualism”) that focuses on difference or controversy is common, particularly when policy matters are to be decided or when a court case—which necessarily involves two opposing interests—provides the platform for mediated discourse (Coleman 1996; Nisbet and Lewenstein 2002). Christians et al. (2001) have argued that the communitarian approach (a values-centered approach) offers an alternative to dualistic and “objective” coverage and provides a platform for pluralistic reporting, which eschews privileging in favor of equity (Andersen 1997). We argue that through the example of coverage of scientific controversies such as Kennewick Man, we begin to chip away at the assumptions that science and journalism are morally neutral and that the two ways of knowing (scientific and cultural rationality) are not truly oppositional. The dualism is seen clearly in scientific controversies, and we offer the case of Kennewick Man as an exemplar. Mass media discourse surrounding the controversy, particularly daily newspaper coverage, illustrates well the


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rhetorical divide between science and culture. Following is background surrounding the case.

The Case of Kennewick Man On July 28, 1996, two friends stumbled on a human skull while wading in the Columbia River near Kennewick, Washington. When called to investigate, local authorities eventually recovered 380 bones at the site to nearly complete a set of human remains. The skeleton was initially thought to be that of a European settler from the American colonial period. However, the semblance of an arrowhead embedded in one hip to those used in the area thousands of years ago prompted further testing. Radiocarbon dating of a bone fragment revealed that the skeleton, tagged Kennewick Man, was in fact over nine thousand years old, making it one of the oldest ever found in North America. Kennewick Man’s age, location, and features sparked immediate interest among scientists, in part because the bones are believed to be inconsistent with widely accepted models of ancient human migration. Traditional models hold that during the last Ice Age (about 12,000 years ago), the first North Americans arrived on foot in what is now Alaska, having traversed from Siberia over land currently covered by the Bering Strait. Today’s Native Americans, some attest, have Mongoloid features that reflect this North Asian heritage. However, Kennewick Man’s remains are more reflective of Polynesian or South Asian origins. This supports emerging anthropological theories suggesting that North America was simultaneously populated by several groups, at least one arriving by boat (Custred 2000). Furthermore, such theories raise significant political issues about race and the “first nation” status under which Native Americans are granted special legal rights in the United States (Tsosie 2003). As initial information about Kennewick Man was released, the federal government, operating through the Army Corps of Engineers (which had jurisdiction over the discovery site), immediately seized the remains to comply with the Native American Graves Protection and Repatriation Act (NAGPRA). The law was passed by Congress and signed by President George H. W. Bush in 1990 in an attempt to rectify the history of unequal treatment of Native American and non–Native American graves and property (McKeown and Hutt 2003; Thomas 2000). NAGPRA provides that Native American “cultural items” (i.e., human remains, funerary objects, and sacred relics) that are held by any agency receiving federal funding or that are found on federal land and to which a federally recognized Indian tribe or Native Hawaiian organization can establish direct lineage or “cultural affiliation”2



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must be returned to the tribe on request. According to section 3005 of NAGPRA, such affiliation may be established by presenting “a preponderance of evidence based upon geographical, kinship, biological, archeological, anthropological, linguistic, folkloric, oral traditional, historical or other relevant information or expert opinion.” The law does not prescribe methods for weighing conflicting evidence (U.S. Department of the Interior, National Park Service n.d.). Under NAGPRA, authorities must notify local tribes when remains are discovered on federal lands. Shortly after tribes near the Kennewick, Washington, site were contacted in August 1996, a coalition of the Nez Perce, Umatilla, Colville, Wanapum, and Yakama tribes claimed Kennewick Man as their ancestor and requested that his bones be returned for burial without further study. Noting that the remains were found near the tribes’ aboriginal lands, the Army Corps of Engineers granted the request and announced plans to turn over Kennewick Man to the coalition. In the face of repatriation, which would most likely render the rare skeleton permanently unavailable for scientific examination, a consortium of eight scientists filed suit against the federal government, claiming, among other things, that restricting their access to Kennewick Man effectively impinged on their First Amendment rights.3 The plaintiff scientists’ primary argument was that NAGPRA did not apply because the skeleton was not Native American. In June 1997, U.S. Magistrate Judge John Jelderks of the Federal District Court in Portland, Oregon, halted the lawsuit and instructed the Army Corps of Engineers to review its initial repatriation decision. The U.S. Department of the Interior (DOI), to whom the corps deferred judgment, was then charged with reascertaining any cultural affiliation between Kennewick Man and the modern tribes. Over the next three years, the DOI would discover that establishing affiliation in this case was particularly problematic, not only because of the skeleton’s age but because the bones were not found with any funerary objects or in a marked burial site that might provide additional evidence.4 Scientific testing of DNA was conducted, contrary to the Indians’ wishes, but proved inconclusive with respect to cultural affiliation. The DOI also contracted experts to conduct extensive interviews with tribal members about their histories and possible links with Kennewick Man. In September 2000, DOI secretary Bruce Babbitt pronounced that geographic evidence and oral histories of the claimant tribes sufficiently demonstrated their cultural affiliation with Kennewick Man. Thus, he reported to the court, Kennewick Man should be repatriated without further examination. Judge Jelderks, however, rejected Babbitt’s findings and chided the government for mishandling the case. He ruled that the scientists’lawsuit against the government, halted in 1997, could proceed.


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After two years of arguments and culling through some twenty thousand pages of the case record, Jelderks ruled in August 2002 in favor of the scientists and ordered the government to make Kennewick Man available for study. Two months later in October, the judge said that the tribes could intervene in the case and file their own appeal (they had not been legally involved in the case until this point). A few days later, the Nez Perce, Umatilla, Yakama, and Colville tribes filed a joint suit in the Ninth U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals to block the scientists from conducting studies on Kennewick Man. The U.S. Department of Justice also appealed the ruling. Testing of the bones was suspended pending a ruling on the appeal. In February 2004, an appeals court panel of judges upheld the earlier ruling in favor of the plaintiff scientists, noting that neither the tribes nor the U.S. government had adequately demonstrated a link between Kennewick Man and his modern claimants. The tribes then filed another appeal—independent of the Department of Justice—this time to have the case heard en banc (i.e., by all judges at the court instead of the standard panel of three). In April 2004, this appeal was denied, leaving an appeal to the U.S. Supreme Court as the only remaining legal recourse for the claimant tribes. Finally, in July 2004, citing worries about resources and about establishing unfavorable case law should an appeal end unsuccessfully, the tribes (and the Department of Justice) allowed the ninety-day appeal window to pass. Thus, the final ruling stands, and Kennewick Man will not be repatriated under NAGPRA. Although the eight-year court case has ended, struggles over treatment of Kennewick Man continue. At press time, the bones remain at the University of Washington’s Burke Museum. An initial two-day study was conducted in late 2004, but the scientists were still waiting for approval by the court of the plan of study they filed in February 2005. Lawyers for the scientists have suggested that the Army Corps of Engineers, which technically has custody of the bones, continues to impose undue restrictions and that another court case may be necessary to compel the corps to make Kennewick Man available for study. Tribal representatives have attempted to maintain involvement in the case by expressing their wishes and concerns about the nature of testing. Also, tribal representatives have stated that their legal resources will now be levied toward reforming NAGPRA to preclude similar legal decisions in the future.

Method We consider ours a case-study approach, in that we focused on a single illustration of a phenomenon, gathered information from a variety of sources,



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and conducted an examination of news coverage. We take our methodological lead from Robert Yin’s (2003) treatise on case-study research in that we are informed by the bodies of literature on mass media communication, science communication, cultural anthropology, and Native American studies; legal reports concerning the Kennewick Man case; documents such as NAGPRA; various Web sites, such as that of the Confederated Tribes of the Umatilla Indian Reservation; film documentaries on Kennewick Man and repatriation issues; Native American news coverage; and popular mainstream news coverage of Kennewick Man from 1996 to 2004. Following Culler’s (1997) lead, we examined news coverage using a “close reading” of all news articles that met the search parameters in the study. Our intent was to gain insight into the tenor of the news coverage, noting particular frames that emerged and assessing how scientific rationality and cultural rationality took shape. We use descriptive methods similar to those used by Bantimaroudis and Ban (2001), Dickerson (2001), and Zoch (2001), who examined key words, phrases, and themes in their respective framing studies. We used the following databases to locate articles from periodicals about Kennewick Man: Newspaper Source, LexisNexis (Academic Universe), Academic Search File, and MasterFILE Premier. The databases typically include news wire services, newspapers, popular magazines, and academic and science-oriented publications. Seeking a Native American perspective, we also consulted the online archives of Indian Country Today, the most widely disseminated Native American newspaper in the United States. Using a time frame of July 28, 1996, through August 5, 2004, we used Kennewick and Kennewick man as search terms. Print (including editorials) and broadcast accounts were retrieved. When the initial batch of articles was retrieved, one author reviewed all content and found many duplicates from the wire services.5 After discarding duplicates, stories that were not specifically related to the Kennewick case, and book reviews, a total of 155 articles were included in the textual analysis. As noted earlier, a deep reading of all remaining articles informed the authors of the emergent frames.

How Discourse Took Shape Several frames emerged in coverage, highlighting conflicts using war and battle metaphors, religion versus science or rationality, the legal and moral rights of stakeholders within the rationality of the court system, the political rights and motives of stakeholders, and the persuasive nature of progress.


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The articles revealed four major players in the controversy: the coalition of tribes that claimed Kennewick Man as their ancestor; the federal government, which seized Kennewick Man and planned to give his remains to the tribes; the consortium of scientists who sued the federal government for access to Kennewick Man; and the Federal District Court in Portland, which was left to determine the fate of Kennewick Man. We discovered that the frames were not necessarily independent of one another: for example, war frames were infused with science in opposition to religion, tradition, or Indians.

The Battlefront: Science versus Indians As the title of Brad Knickerbocker’s June 21, 2001, Christian Science Monitor article suggested, there was a clear element of “science vs. Indian tradition in the ‘Kennewick Man’case.” While some writers, such as the AP’s Nicholas Geranios, drafted stories of friction between groups of people— ”scientists and Indians battle for the bones of Kennewick Man” (August 11, 1997)—others, such as the AP’s Doug Esser, followed the Monitor’s lead and characterized the case as “a symbol of the conflict between science and religion” (September 22, 2001). Taking the latter approach, an October 19, 1996, Economist story described the case as “a cultural conflict between Western science and traditional religious beliefs.” Danny Westneat’s July 21, 2004, Seattle Times column echoed this notion in describing “a collision between scientific inquiry and tribal rights.” The Times of London went further in the headline of its October 4, 1997, article, suggesting that the “bones put Indians on the warpath.” With respect to such coverage, Suzan Shown Harjo, a noted Native activist writing for Indian Country Today, suggested in her July 23, 2004, column that reporters who framed this story in terms of a “victory of science over religion” did so by using a “modern day metaphor for ‘cowboys and Indians.’” In these and other instances, science is placed in the superior position of either acknowledging or disproving what the Native Americans believe. From the scientific perspective, Indian oral history, which undergirds ontology, is discounted as a rationale for the repatriation of the bones. Oral history seems antithetical to the empiricist’s desire to test and measure. Indians are portrayed as simple, perhaps stubborn people who do not want to deal with being proved wrong by the “truth” of Western science. Yet the Indian tribes consider Kennewick Man (called “the Ancient One” by some tribes) as “significant” to their traditional teachings. A northwestern religious leader, Armand Minthorn, told a 60 Minutes reporter for the September 15, 2002, program, “Our older people tell us that when a body goes into the ground,



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that’s where it’s to remain until the end of time. It’s been removed. It’s violating everything we know . . . we regard human remains as sacred. Period.” Many have argued that oral history alone should be sufficient evidence to sway courts and publics of the inviolate legitimacy of Native American concerns. And indeed, some advocates have interpreted NAGPRA as supporting oral histories as evidentiary. Minthorn told 60 Minutes that his beliefs are grounded in Indian reality, which is no less legitimate than scientific reasoning: We know what happened 10,000 years ago. I know what happened 10,000 years ago at home along the Columbia River, because my teachings from my older people tell me how life was 10,000 years ago. And the scientists cannot accept the fact that just because it’s not written down in a book, it’s not fact. It’s fact to me, because I live it every day.

Legal and Moral Rights That ancestral bones are inextricable from place holds little currency against the scientific arguments brought to bear in the legal battles and in subsequent news accounts. Indian concerns were positioned in opposition to the scientific viewpoint, with the result that Native American claims were vague and mystical. In contrast, the scientific arguments in news coverage asserted a rational positivism intimately tied to progress. In Carol Smith’s August 31, 2002, article in the Seattle Post-Intelligencer, science was framed in news accounts as “legitimate scientific research” with the additional currency of political justice on the side of scientists who “have a right” to ask questions about the past. While the bones were characterized as having immense value to scientists—even editorialized in the April 21, 2004, edition of the Rocky Mountain News as “a priceless gift to science”—the value to the tribes was given little credence. For example, the term significance is used to refer to the scientific perspective but is rarely used in framing Indian accounts. For the scientists, Kennewick Man is “terribly significant” (60 Minutes), of “immense scientific importance,” and among the “world’s most significant fossils,” according to Mark Henderson and Daniel McAllister of the London Times (May 16, 2003). Repatriating the bones would “harm science,” resulting in “significant injury to . . . scientists,” according to a January 8, 2003, AP story and cause “irreparable damage to science” (Randerson, Ananthaswamy, and Young 2003). Returning Kennewick Man would create the “ultimate denial of his place in history” (60 Minutes). One plaintiff, an anthropology professor, deemed the August 2002 ruling in favor of the plaintiffs “a win for all science,” according to Smith’s August


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31, 2002, story. After the final court ruling, Westneat explained in his Seattle Times column (titled “We All Own Kennewick Man’s Bones”) that in this “epic struggle between science and religion . . . science won.” Spiritual and religious concerns are pitted against scientific rationality in such news coverage, with the positivist perspective elevated to a higher status. When interviewing Minthorn, 60 Minutes reporter Lesley Stahl asked if his “religion specifically [told him] that [his] were the first people here.” When Minthorn answered, “Yes,” Stahl’s reply was “So anything that challenges that challenges your religion.” Thus, Stahl inferred Indians as antiscience, concluding, “Science doesn’t matter to them.” Yet science matters to the reporter, who said, “We wanted to know why the [Army Corps of Engineers] kept siding with the Indians instead of the scientists.” Thus, Stahl established the news frame as the Indians in opposition to science. The 1999 decision to conduct DNA testing on Kennewick Man highlights the epistemological and legal conundrum. Judge Jelderks commented that any establishment of cultural affiliation that did not include DNA evidence would be suspicious; however, this testing is specifically that to which the tribes objected. That is, to win repatriation, the tribes would have had to permit the precise action that spurred the decision to file for repatriation in the first place. From the Native perspective, DNA testing was invasive, disrespectful, and unnecessary. As one tribal spokesperson explained in Geranios’s August 11, 1997, AP article, “We already know our history. . . . It is passed on to us through our elders and our religious practices.” However, as the report of the Canadian Citizens’ Centre for Freedom and Democracy noted, “Anthropologists were nonplussed at the idea that an ‘oral tradition’ purportedly dating back nine thousand years could, would, or should be considered scientific—at least to the permanent exclusion of any other test or evidence” (Cosh 2002, 3).

Political Rights and Motives Accusations of political correctness were frequent in discourse about Kennewick Man. The long history of discontent between Native Americans, the U.S. government, and anthropologists and other scientists has certainly garnered delicate treatment (by some) of current Indian issues. While past grievances have left many with a feeling of obligation toward Native Americans that is borne of socially historical guilt, making decisions on the basis of that feeling constitutes behaving in a politically correct manner, or so the accusation goes. The pejorative connotation is that behaving in a politically correct manner comes at the expense of some more appropriate behavior, as



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if one behaves in a politically correct manner simply to appease some constituency while disregarding what is normative or correct. An Economist article exemplified this notion by suggesting that “the government’s decision serves neither science nor the tribes. Indeed, it seems primarily political—aimed at placating Native Americans and their supporters rather than seriously grappling with the provenance of Kennewick Man” (“Boneheaded” 2000, 84). Writing in the libertarian magazine Reason, Miller (1997) also alluded to political banter interrupting the scientific process: “Scientists’ opponents would have the world believe that this is simply another morality play between treaty-breaking whites and reservation-bound Indians. . . . Nothing could be further from the truth” (p. 53). By suggesting that they alone are able to strip away political correctness and speak frankly about Kennewick Man, science advocates bolstered their standing as dispassionate arbiters of truth and concomitantly delegitimized the government’s and tribal positions. Regarding DNA testing, one scientist said in a December 28, 1999, AP article that he “fear[ed] government lawyers in the Kennewick Man case would select one date out of several possible options to support their case . . . disregarding the scientific complexity.” In other words, the lawyers would distort scientific data to suit their needs. This scientist said of officials, “Their goal is to win an argument, my goal is to find the truth by scientific experiments.” Discourse about Kennewick Man included accusations of political motives for parties other than government officials. Coverage of the Kennewick Man case suggested that at least three of its four major players— the government, the tribes, and the scientists—had political motives. When government officials were not acting out of historical obligation or guilt, they may have been attempting to maintain positive relations with tribes to facilitate favorable negotiations over land use and fishing rights near the discovery site. Alternatively, as William McCall reported for the AP on April 18, 2001, officials may have been avoiding a “messy battle about how the first inhabitants of North America arrived” to court Native American support in the 2000 presidential election. And Indians were accused of conjuring religion for purely political purposes: The driving force behind the “repatriation” effort, however, is primarily political, involving the most literate, the most assimilated, and the most politically aware members (and would-be members) of the Indian population. For them and the advancement of their interests, value lies not in knowing what really happened in the past, but rather in an image of the past which best serves their purposes. In short, the interests of such activists lie not in science but rather in defense of a political myth. (Custred 2000, 26)


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In this and other instances, Native Americans are portrayed as having a chip on their collective shoulder or acting more out of revenge or “politics.” But, as tribal spokesman Armand Minthorn explained in a February 2, 2000, AP article, What is at issue in this case is not just our desire to protect one ancestor, but how this case will be applied to every other Native American skeleton found in the United States. . . . This case has made it painfully clear that a small group of scientists, with the assistance of the Department of the Interior, can abrogate that right . . . to protect our ancestors.

While scientific perspectives in news coverage are infused with objectivity, they are certainly not devoid of political motivation. For example, a scientist involved in DNA testing of Kennewick Man suggested in the same AP article in which Minthorn was interviewed that while test results may not have much factual bearing, the testing itself was important for political reasons: “It is a real long shot to try to say anything meaningful on the cultural affiliation question (with a DNA test). . . . On the other hand, they are doing science, so the scientific position is winning time after time.” Also, scientists share the Native Americans’judgment that the court case has greater implications than simply determining if further testing will be conducted on Kennewick Man.

Progress Such frames commonly infused the values of progress over “the past.” For example, a nonprofit group of science advocates suggested in Knickerbocker’s June 21, 2001, Christian Science Monitor article, Resolution of this case will affect scientists’ freedom to study other skeletons, other sites, other traces of the past . . . if these scientists [in the lawsuit] are successful, there will be a future for archeology and physical anthropology in this country. If not, the future could be bleak for a scientific understanding of the past.

In a similar vein, one of the plaintiffs noted in a Washington Post story by Steve Coll on June 3, 2001, “Can we resurrect and make history right? I don’t think so . . . I mean, hey, life goes on.” While Indian perspectives were drawn as regressive, the government’s initial decision to return Kennewick Man to the tribes was blasted as “bad science.” In an editorial appearing in the Rocky Mountain News on September 27, 2000, DOI Secretary Bruce Babbitt’s decision was mocked: “The greatest



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scientific nation in history would be adopting a head-in-the sand attitude of a pre-literate society.” The piece concluded that a new federal agency should be added: “The Bureau to Suppress Anthropological Progress.” In summary, the coverage of Kennewick Man reveals a contestation over values in the vein of scientists versus Indians. News coverage favors empirical evidence and scientific opinion, giving weight to Habermas’s (1970, 82) contention that Marcuse correctly identified the political dominion of scientific rationality. As a result, coverage lacks an ethical basis and was largely devoid of pluralism. Science is truth. Science is logic. In quoting Levi (1959, 52), Wilkins and Christians (2001) noted that “in logic, there are no morals.” Moreover, by invoking a scientific frame and a political frame, coverage obfuscated the central human element grounded in philosophical anthropology. Despite our findings that news coverage of Kennewick Man has been framed through a scientific lens, others have argued that more compelling, long-term issues—such as the repatriation of indigenous artifacts and remains—is not about scientific principles but rather “political, religious and ethical issues” wrought by the discovery of ancient remains Indian tribes claim as their own (Meighan 1993, 13).

Conclusions and Implications We argue that by framing coverage of Kennewick Man as a contest with Native Americans in opposition to scientists, readers and viewers behold a scene that reenacts the familiar conflicts of indigenous peoples held hostage by colonial interests. As Native activist Harjo wrote, reporters have framed the Kennewick story with the metaphor of cowboy versus Indian, thus reminding readers of the inevitable outcome of such skirmishes. But can science right history? Some would argue that the purpose of NAGPRA is designed to do just that: recognize and defend Native American cultural histories and artifacts, for which science shares a responsibility. Still, at least one scientist eschewed his ethical responsibility for defending culture by discounting Native American claims as political, stating that “we can’t make history right” and “life goes on.” “Life goes on” with the notion that scientific decisions are outside the dominion or influence of culture. Scientific inquiry is declared morally neutral, and because morals fall outside science, morals are irrational (Wilkins and Christians 2001). The dilemma for those telling the Kennewick Man tale in the mainstream—print reporters, editorial columnists, broadcast journalists, and so on—is that the story’s roots are grounded in values and morals of


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our earliest inhabitants. The journalistic task of “enlightenment through neutral, value-free knowledge” (Wilkins and Christians 2001, 100) is jeopardized because both scientific inquiry and the act of communication are bound by ideological worldviews. Real-life dramas that invoke scientific rationality and progress and that affect Native American tribes—such as mineral and oil exploration, radioactive dumps, and age-old skeletal remains—relegate Indians to a preserved past in which their values are considered quaint, outmoded, and scientifically irrelevant. Indians stand in the way of progress and, in the case of Kennewick Man, scientific progress. Scientific endeavors are progressive and have “elevated human confidence and capacity to create a modern, industrial, self-critical, tolerant, and democratic society” (Logan 2001, 138). But the discourse surrounding relations between the United States and Indian has long embraced the frames of progress and the advancement of civilization, with Indians framed as regressive and savage (see, e.g., Jennings 1976). Imbued with scientific discovery and progress themes, the Kennewick Man story also invoked courtroom battles. Here, scientific “facts” are favored over other forms of proof, while experts, who tend to favor technical over human solutions, are called to provide hard evidence (Foster and Huber 1999). Again, that which can be quantified and verified is supremely valued. Scientific evidence is of such import in the courtroom that legal scholars and practitioners, including Supreme Court justices, have actively engaged in debates about just what may be deemed legitimately scientific, thus substantiating that to label some evidence as scientific is to afford it undue credence (certainly from jurors and possibly from judges; Breyer 1998; Jasanoff 2001). By extension, evidence that is not scientific may be largely disregarded. For example, when Judge Jelderks’ conclusion that “no evidence shows either a ‘cultural affiliation’ or a ‘shared group identity’ of Kennewick Man with any modern Native American group” was reported, previous pronouncements by federal agencies of sufficient oral historical and geographic evidence for repatriation were discounted (Bower 2002, 190). Narrowing the discourse to judicial concerns had a significant impact on coverage of the Kennewick Man case. The primary legal questions in this court case were whether Kennewick Man was Native American and whether the claimant tribes had sufficiently demonstrated cultural affiliation with the skeleton. Reporters followed suit, and two questions emerge as significant results of coverage: What does it mean to be Native American? Why would tribes claim a skeleton to which they may not even be related (according to scientists)? However, this range of discourse obscures another important question: Why is it important for scientists to study Kennewick Man? Although specific practices vary, the value of death and burial rituals and



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respecting ancestors is almost universally accepted; indeed, this need has been federally recognized and enshrined in law for Native American tribes, Inuit, and Native Hawaiians in NAGPRA. However, when faced with a decision over cultural heritage and scientific progress, it seems the superiority of science is even more deeply embedded in Western culture (i.e., in institutions such as the courts) as evidenced by the following: the scientists who seek to override the tribes’ legal protection are not asked to justify the need to study Kennewick Man. In a strictly judicial sense, it does not matter. The valuation is science for science’s sake. Perhaps the most significant finding emerging from this case-study is that scientific pursuits are tacitly presented in mediated discourse as progressive. This is consistent with previous analyses of reporting on scientific controversies (e.g., Coleman 1997; Priest 1995); however, the case of Kennewick Man departs from previous studies and is thus particularly significant because it does not involve technology. In controversies over such “advancements” as embryonic stem cell research or the genetic modification of crops, reporting can follow a cost-benefit format, weighing the obvious (if uncertain) medical or economic benefit of adopting a scientific pursuit against ethical or moral concerns about its consequences (i.e., costs). In the case of Kennewick Man, there is no such tangible fruit of technological advancement. Nonetheless, on the whole, coverage of this case implies (and sometimes pointedly expressed) that an increase in scientific data is itself a worthwhile benefit and that legalized repatriation bears too high a cost to science. For example, Washington Senator Slade Gorton’s comments in 1997 echo ethical rationalism: “It is in the public interest that information providing greater insight into American prehistory should be collected, preserved, and disseminated for the benefit of the country as a whole” (Miller 1997). Exactly how this is a benefit to the country is never explained. And, as many scholars who have studied news coverage have attested, some sources may venture forth unchallenged, and it is taken as a given that increasing the body of knowledge surrounding prehistory is accorded a high value. Thus, an increase in scientific data is unquestioned and progressive.

The Public Interest We contend that such coverage, as evidenced in the Kennewick Man case, has resulted in a disservice to publics. The majority of citizens glean information about American Indians from mass media depictions: few know firsthand the cultural rationality of Native American peoples. Rather, what is known “to be Indian” is derived from a patchwork stitched of sentimentality and invention, historically driven by depictions to rid the country of its


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denizens: “As romantic poets abandoned the Noble Savage and the publication milieu changed from gentlemanly publishing house to mass-market industry, so did the American Indian’s reputation decline, hastened down the path by the brutal wars in the West” (Stedman 1982, 79-80). Ethical communication of the Kennewick Man story would be better served by unconditional acceptance of the Other as the only legitimate option, according to Christians and Traber (1997) and Wilkins and Christians (2001). Finally, when we view the controversy through an ethical lens, we find that frames used by journalists set up the debate as a battle between scientists and Indians. We suggest that such news frames channel stereotypes of cowboy-and-Indian skirmishes of the past, thus confusing contemporary arguments, such as repatriation, with vestigial visions of a conquered people. Pluralism is lost and ethics forgotten. We agree with Christians and his colleagues, who argue that pluralistic coverage would better address such scientific controversies by aligning values in both scientific rationality and cultural rationality domains. That is, pluralistic coverage recognizes the expression in discourse of equity of values, rather than a privileging of values, with the resulting journalistic landscape arranged as “a hundred flowers blooming” (Christians, Ferre, and Fackler 1993, 125). Finally, we would infuse pluralism with communitarian ethics, but with a Native American thread. While Christians and colleagues advocate stitching ethics to community, we advocate infusion of ethics within the indigenous sense of “place” (James 2001). For American Indians, place is the focal point of meaning. Deloria and Wildcat (2001, 31-32) expressed this concept eloquently: “Indigenous people represent a culture emergent from place . . . behavior, beliefs, values, symbols and material products” all emerge from place. Community, too, arises from place, not from a collection of individuals. Relationships, therefore, arise from the intersection of living beings within place: “The broader Indian idea of relationship, in a universe that is very personal and particular suggests that all relationships have a moral content” (Deloria and Wildcat 2001, 23). In closing, we recall Paul Shepard’s (1998) discussion of culture, science, and what it means to be human: When we grasp fully that the best expressions of our humanity were not invented by civilization but by cultures that preceded it, that the natural world is not only a set of constructs but of contexts within which we can more fully realize our dreams, we will be on the way to a long overdue reconciliation between opposites that are of our own making. (P. 6)



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Notes 1. The majority of respondents (American adults) in an October 2003 Harris Interactive poll regarded scientists as very prestigious. Given that “professions with high prestige are those which are widely seen to do great work which benefits society and the people they serve,” it is significant that scientists were ranked as the most prestigious professionals, more so than doctors, teachers, military officials, lawyers, members of Congress, and journalists (Taylor 2003). 2. According to section 3001, paragraph 2, of NAGPRA, cultural affiliation “means that there is a relationship of shared group identity which can be reasonably traced historically or prehistorically between a present day Indian tribe or Native Hawaiian organization and an identifiable earlier group” (U.S. Department of the Interior, National Park Service n.d.). 3. The Asatru Folk Assembly, a small pagan group that worships Norse gods and goddesses, also sued for the rights to study Kennewick Man, claiming that he was their Viking ancestor. According to an Associated Press (AP) article by Linda Ashton on October 29, 1998, this plaintiff pulled out of the trial before judgment, citing a lack of funding or belief in a favorable outcome. 4. Indeed, the discovery site was the source of another controversy, according to a March 13, 1998, AP article. The Army Corps of Engineers determined that covering the site with tons of gravel was necessary to prevent environmental repercussions. This action was fought in court and, when executed, was met with accusations of favoring Native Americans. 5. We found that seventy-five articles were from wire services, with many duplicates. For the sake of parsimony, we chose only one article from each group that comprised the same story. We chose the story with the highest word count in each group and discarded the remaining duplicates.

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CYNTHIA-LOU COLEMAN is an associate professor of communication at Portland State University in Portland, Oregon, where she teaches theory and methods of mass communication research. Her research interests include health, risk, and environmental communication, particularly issues that affect North American Indians. She is an enrolled member of the Osage (Wa-sha-she) Nation. ERIN V. DYSART earned her M.S. degree in communication from Portland State University in 2004. Her research focused on mass media, specifically news representations of science issues. She now works for a nonprofit cultural exchange organization.
