Jerry Brekke, courtesy of Cayuse Press
From left, Shane Doyle, Eske Willerslev, landowner and researcher Sarah Anzick, Larry Lahren and Linus Mørk production crew visit the Anzick Clovis burial site near Wilsall on Sept. 22, 2013.
In May 1968, while removing fill material with a front-end loader on Mel and Helen Anzick’s property near Wilsall, equipment operator Ben Hargis saw a prehistoric stone tool fall out of the bucket. Along the edge of a prominent outcrop, where Flathead Creek and the Shields River join, Ben found the gravesite of a 1- to 2-year-old male child, interred with more than 100 stone tools covered with red ochre.
This burial is the most significant Paleoindian site in North America — representing the earliest evidence of religion in the Western Hemisphere and the oldest, most complete assemblage of funerary items left by the Clovis culture that lived here at least 11,000 years ago.
Since I first viewed the burial artifacts and skeletal remains in 1968, my role has been to ensure that this child, and what his parents intended for him, received the respect we all deserve.
An international research team led by Professor Eske Willersev, director of the Center for GeoGenetics at the University of Copenhagen, Denmark, has implied that they followed respectful, legal and ethical guidelines during the course of their recent genetic studies.
But did this happen?
House Bill 165, the Montana Repatriation (Reburial) Act, was introduced to the Montana Legislature in 2001. The act was created at the request of the Law, Justice, and Indian Affairs Committee . Eddye McClure, staff attorney for the Montana Burial Preservation Board, opined that:
“…both common law and legal decisions have consistently recognized that human skeletal remains are not property abandoned when interred. Discoverers, therefore, have no right of ownership, and they cannot confer a right of ownership to another. Neither a private nor public person, other than a descendant of culturally affiliated group, can legally claim ownership of human skeletal remains or funerary objects.”
When the political dust settled, Clovis burial funerary items were excluded from the act. However, it still provided the intent and tribal standing for the repatriation of the Clovis skeletal remains. At the time, the location of the skeletal remains, which had been taken out of state, was not even known to tribal representatives.
More than a year ago, I was advised that genetic studies of the Clovis child were complete. Willersev asked me to give the project my after-the-fact blessing and to be one of 42 co-authors on an article to appear in Nature magazine (Feb. 13, 2014). Another request was to arrange for Native contact in Montana. I declined and suggested the researchers contact the state archaeologist, the Montana Burial Board and Montana tribal Leaders.
At a pre-publication meeting on Sept. 21, 2013, Professor Willersev had a problem. Studies were already complete — so how could he show that he followed legal and ethical guidelines and demonstrated proper respect for the child’s remains? To reduce Willersev’s angst, I invited Shane Doyle, Crow tribal member and adjunct professor in Native American studies at Montana State University, along with a teacher and students from Crow Agency to visit the site the next day.
Shane had no knowledge of the genetic studies, or the politics involved. I made it clear to Willersev that Shane was an independent visitor — not a representative of the tribes, the university or any other entity.
At the site, I explained the burial context. Willersev then stated that the Clovis child shared genetics with contemporary Native Americans.
“Speaking from the heart, I think you should put him back now,” was Shane’s long-thought-out response.
He then agreed to be an unofficial liaison with the Montana tribes.
During a whirlwind tour to the Northern Cheyenne, Salish-Kootenai and Blackfeet reservations, tribal leaders asked the Crow to pursue repatriation of the child’s ancient remains. Larson Medicine Horse will oversee the ceremony, scheduled for this June.
What about the funerary items associated with the child? The burial of “replicas” has been suggested.
For nearly 50 years, the Clovis burial has been subject to institutional and individual opportunism, aggrandizing and “ownership” by what I call “Clovis carpetbaggers.” Last month, when I visited the Clovis child’s funerary items on clinical display at the Montana Historical Society, I was overwhelmed with the same humble, naive feelings I had when I first beheld them.
I wondered what message has been sent to the people who buried the child; to those that are genetically related to them; to this and the next generation of archaeologists; and to humanity?
Do colonial attitudes and science’s “need to know” override ethics, law and respect for Native American values?
Archaeologist Larry A. Lahren, of Livingston, owns Anthro Research Inc., an independent archaeology firm created in 1971. He is author of “Homeland: An archaeologist’s view of Yellowstone Country’s past.”
