First, the 'Asatru Folk Assembly' represents only one small part of the spiritual and religious movement known as Asatru or Heathenism (from the old word, in Icelandic 'Heidhinn' pronounced approximately 'Hay-then'). Mr McNallen pointed this out. However there's a wide range of views within Asatru on Kennewick Man and Mr McNallen doesn't speak for everybody or even for the majority.
As an anthropologist who's been studying Heathenism, my findings are that most Heathens I've spoken with on the internet or in person take a view very similar to that expressed by the Department of the Interior spokeswoman. I've been following this case since the outset (and indeed finding extreme annoyance among the community over the views of the AFA). The view I hear is approximately this:
I am studying Heathenism because I support it. I'm speaking as a Heathen in addition to being an anthropologist, on behalf of an international organization known as The Troth, and the many unaffiliated practitioners I've spoken with. We'd like to see the bones treated with respect. We hope that their study is useful and productive, but stress the need for the treatment of the bones with respect and a minimum of destructive procedures. Eventually they should be buried with honour. An 'Indian' ceremony would seem the most appropriate. The tribes today on the land where he was found have our support in their claim to the final interment of these bones. Their designation of him as "The Ancient One" seems appropriate, honourable and respectful.
As somebody who's both an anthopologist and a Heathen, I find the involvement of the AFA to be unfortunate and unnecessary. The main question for me is not about 'race', or 'ownership'; it's about understanding prehistory and the development of cultures. Spirituality and religion don't stay static, they changed over time on both continents. Let Kennewick Man be placed to rest by the inheritors of the places where he lived and died, the local Native Peoples.
PS. Asatru or Heathenism is quite a well-developed religion in its theology. A number of academics have written about it, including myself. For more details of the religion, go to http://www.thetroth.org
By whatever route this Ancient One, or his ancestors and those of his community (for he will not have been alone) came to the Americas, his life was there, in what is now the North Western US, dealing with plants and people, animals, spirits, embedded in a context that was his. (Sometimes it sounds as if some Asatruars believe that he got on a boat from Europe, and walked across the continent in a few months!) Only by placing this person in a context of times, lifestyle, environment can we remove the constuctions of 'race' and 'kind', of 'them and us', that have bedevilled the thinking on the Ancient One (and that were patently evident in much of the 'debate' on air).
I'm interested in this Ancient One, for a number of reasons. These have to do with lifestyles of foraging peoples, movements of people over time, and attempts to understand the complexities of human relationships with environment. As an anthropologist, my interests are more to do with how well-nourished this person was and what the skeleton reveals about fitness and subsistence patterns, rather than supposed 'race'! However, it seems to me that his relevance specifically for Heathenism is around zero. Heathenism developed, in Europe, from old shamanic relationships with spirits and environment, changing over millennia in response to techniques, people, ideas. Ásatrú with its deities of Aesir and Vanir, its rituals of blót and sumbel, is specific to time, place, culture: based on a 'final flourish', shall we say, in the poetry of the North of expressions of the ways in which certain gifted individuals viewed their -- our -- deities within the context of their times and a political situation in which Christianity was encroaching on the North, and power and privilege increasing becoming centralized. Indeed, many of the poems may have found their final form in response to Christian ideas, or through pens wielded by Christians who (for example Snorri) were sufficiently sympathetic to the old ways, or had their own reasons to commit to writing what they did.
This is the context of the development of the kinds of Heathenism that are now known as Ásatrú; and which is undergoing further adaption to contexts of this new millenium that we are entering, 1000 years after the 'conversion' of Iceland. But they are not the context of this Ancient One, nor of his descendents within North America.
Much has been made of the 'fact' that 'Kennewick Man' has 'traits' that may be seen as 'caucasoid'. I must stress that this does not mean he was what today gets called 'white'. And even if (somehow) skin colour could be ascertained, this would tell us nothing about lifestyle or spirituality. All kinds of interesting concepts are coming out of current research, about population movements and diversity of origins. This skeleton is interesting, fascinating, because it gives clues to the story of humanity in North America: but for Heathens to lay claim to this Ancient One is mistaken. Some may think that the world can be simply divided according to genetics and 'race': but I and most others I have met see context and history, culture and diversity, and investigate a far more interesting past; even as we live in a complex present that promises a future of intriguing potential, hope and joy.