The Extermination of Kennewick Man's Authenticity through Discourse

Abstract

S p R I n g 2 0 1 3 W I C A Z O S A R E V I E W When pieces of a skeleton were unearthed in the Pacific Northwest in 1996, the discourse surrounding its origins revealed deeply held values and led to questions and judgments of what constitute Native American cultural affiliation and authenticity. This essay explores one of those threads— authenticity— and how its meanings unraveled in the social discourse surrounding the discovery of what North American Indian tribes called the Ancient One, who is popularly known as Kennewick Man. By examining news reports, television programs, tribal websites, legal documents, and empirical literature about the case, I show how the construction of Kennewick Man’s authenticity through discourse is infused with “referentials”— a term Jean Baudrillard used to illustrate how signs, images, and simulations are substituted for the original, and how referents in mediated form replace the original. Baudrillard claimed that we come to know the real through the “imaginary” in a world where “referentials combine their discourses in a circular, Möbian compulsion.”1 That is, Baudrillard uses as metaphor the Möbius strip— a picture that tricks the eye (a trompel’oeil)— which confuses the viewer by making the boundaries of an object vague. Similarly, social discourse is an illusion, confusing the viewer by reimagining boundaries. This essay, therefore, examines the boundaries around strips of discourse in an attempt to locate the sutures that stitch the authentic with the fake. I argue that mediated discourse has effectively exterminated the authenticity of Kennewick Man. the extermination of Kennewick man’s authenticity through Discourse