Do you think the media coverage of the case has helped or hurt your cause?

	An artist's rendering based on skeletal remains of how Kennewick man might have looked.

I think it has pointed out the complexity of the people of the Americas. Archaeology books talk about Clovis hunters coming in some 13,500 years ago. Well, the textbooks are out of date. Now, we are talking about multiple groups coming in from different locations thousands of years earlier. And people came by different routes than we thought. We always talked about the Bering land bridge, but I think earlier people came in by boats. We cannot rule out that people came across the Atlantic Ocean at this early time period.

The whole paradigm is in transition, and it is the Kennewick skeleton that points this out. Only scientific study can address those questions. We're standing up for the right to ask questions of the past and to challenge what's in the history books.

What is a typical day like for you? How does a typical case proceed?

I am in some ways a generalist and consult with different specialists who have expertise that is relevant to our problem. You can't know everything, but if you work in an interdisciplinary environment where you bring in multiple lines of evidence, you can get it done. If you put it in the perspective of how far we've come in the last ten, twenty years, think of where we'll be in another ten, twenty or fifty years. That's why Kennewick man is so important. We can learn so much from Kennewick man today, but what our children will be able to do will make us pale in comparison.

Doug Owsley worked closely with officials at the Jamestown Island archeological site to identify the remains of 17th century English settlers. Read about the FRONTIERS segment on this topic , or watch this segment online.
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Photo: Andre Ranieri/Tri-City Herald