The discovery of 10,300-year-old human remains in a southeast Alaska island cave in 1996 provided new insights into the lives of ancient people and helped cement a partnership between local tribes and scientists.
University of Colorado at Boulder Professor James Dixon was a lead researcher who studied the bones, the earliest human skeletal remains ever found in Alaska or Canada. In the project's early days, Dixon recognized the significance of the cooperation between the Tlingit and Haida tribes, scientists and government officials.
The successful partnership and the knowledge gained from the ancient bones and artifacts found in the cave are explored in a new 30-minute documentary titled "Kuwóot yas.éin -- His Spirit Is Looking Out From the Cave." The documentary was released on video this summer by the Sealaska Heritage Institute in Juneau, Alaska.
"The key to our partnership was making sure the tribal governments were informed about what we were doing, which included notifying them quickly when we made discoveries," said Dixon, curator of the Museum and Field Studies program at the CU Museum of Natural History. "We also invited local people to be involved with the research and included them in projects."
Other discoveries of ancient human remains have not led to such cooperative relationships. In fact, the famous 1996 discovery of Kennewick Man, whose 9,000-year-old remains were found in eastern Washington on the banks of the Columbia River, led to court battles that halted research efforts until just recently.
"It boils down to respecting the dead," Dixon said. "The fact is these remains are scientifically important, but are also somebody's ancestors. So working collaboratively with the local people was very important to us on this project."
The remains and artifacts found in "On Your Knees Cave" on Prince of Wales Island, offer unprecedented clues and evidence to scientists as to who was living in the area at the time, and the kind of lives they led.
"The discovery indicated that humans had colonized the area before the end of the last Ice Age about 11,000 years ago," Dixon said. That has led some scientists to question the predominant theory that humans first entered the Americas from Asia via an ice-free corridor in western Canada, because the remains were found on an island accessible only by watercraft.
The same hunger for clues to the past also intrigued people from the local Tlingit and Haida tribes, according to Rosita Worl, president of Sealaska Heritage Institute and Tlingit tribal member.
"When we first learned about this discovery and were invited to participate, one of our elders said that it was a great opportunity to reaffirm our oral traditions that our ancestors have been in this area all along," Worl said. "The immediate notification of tribal members of the finding by the government agencies and scientists involved was really important because it gave the elders time to think about what it meant."
Tlingit oral traditions describe their ancestors living in southeast Alaska dating back to the last ice age, according to Worl. Their traditions offer strong parallels to the scientific theories being constructed from archaeological evidence, she said.
Tests on the bones showed they are from a young man, who was in his early 20s when he died more than 10,000 years ago. The researchers also determined that he ate mostly seafood and had tools made from volcanic glass from an area on mainland Canada and an adjacent island.
"I hope this partnership helps demonstrate that scientific research and Native American rights can coexist when people work together in a spirit of cooperation and mutual respect," Dixon said.
The video was produced by the Sealaska Heritage Institute in collaboration with the Tongass National Forest, Denver Museum of Nature and Science and the National Park Service. It was funded in part by the National Science Foundation.
For more information about the video contact the Sealaska Heritage Institute at (907) 463-4844 or visit the Web site at .