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Wanapum Dam River Drawdown Churns Up More Old Bones

Anna King
/
Northwest News Network
Washington State officials are worried over the safety of newly-found human remains and artifacts on miles of newly-exposed Columbia River shoreline.

State officials are reporting the discovery of a second set of human remains near the cracked Wanapum Dam on the Columbia River in Eastern Washington state.

We now know the first skeleton discovered last week near Crescent Bar is male, Native American and could be very old. The second skeleton is also Native American but its gender is not yet known. This new discovery was found about 500 yards downstream from the first.

More than 50 years ago, the Wanapum Dam’s reservoir cloaked scores of culturally significant sites, petroglyphs and graves deep under water. But now these important Native Americans artifacts and remains have been uncovered with the drawdown of the river water behind the damaged dam.

Now, walking along the Columbia River cobble near Vantage, Wash., -- cobble that would normally be deep under water -- is amazing.

River guards and Native Americans are trying to educate ever-increasing numbers of gawkers and explorers that tampering with Native American or historical sites is against the law, and disrupting a gravesite is a felony.

“Anytime there’s a reduced river elevation, there are always the risk of exposing human remains and things like that that have been impacted by the result of river inundation,” says Grant County PUD spokesman Thomas Stredwick.

There are dozens of miles to keep safe.

The Washington State Department of Archaeology and Historic Preservation is scrambling to figure out what to do with both sets of remains.

Allyson Brooks, the agency's director, says with more discoveries each day, the task is daunting and her tiny agency can hardly keep up.

“The irony of TV shows like Law and Order, Bones and CSI is that the public gets the sense that we can answer a question in 60 minutes or less.”

Brooks says what they don’t want is a repeat of what happened with Kennewick Man’s discovery. That was nearly 20 years ago just downriver from Vantage.

“It got really ugly really fast when it didn’t have to,” she says.

Those bones were found to be more than 9,000 years old. Local tribes wanted the remains turned over to them, but federal courts ruled they weren’t related to modern-day Native Americans, so the bones remain at the Burke Museum in Seattle.

But tribes haven’t given up hope of one day reburying what they call the “Ancient One.”

Still, the recently found bones shouldn’t share the same fate. At least according to Brooks.

“We are not going to take pieces of the remains and carbon-14 date them at this point," she says. "Or anything else.”

But some bone experts do hope that some additional study might be done.

Tom Stafford, one of the lead scientists on Kennewick Man, is an expert at carbon-dating bones -- both human and animal -- up to 1 million years old. He says, “Anytime you have a river or lake that has gone down or exposed an old 1800 A.D. village or something like this, the potential is just enormous.”

But destroying bits of bone -- like on Kennewick Man -- for tests is highly offensive to Northwest tribes. Still, things are different now, according to Stafford. He says top DNA and carbon-dating scientists are increasing the dialogue and face-to-face meetings with Northwest Tribes.

“To me, the Kennewick situation would never come up again," Stafford says. "It’s a unique scenario.”

So far, the leader of the Wanapum band of Native Americans, Rex Buck Jr., says the state is treating these remains and cultural artifacts with respect.

Grant County officials say they’re going to up their patrols of the river shore. And Chelan County and Douglas County sheriff officers will be helping out on the Columbia River by week’s end.

No one seems to be sure about how long this drawdown, and patrols will be needed.

Anna King calls Richland, Washington home and loves unearthing great stories about people in the Northwest. She reports for the Northwest News Network from a studio at Washington State University, Tri-Cities. She covers the Mid-Columbia region, from nuclear reactors to Mexican rodeos.