Geoffrey Clark on NAGPRA's Fatal Flaw

...Kennewick Man underscores a fatal flaw in NAGPRA, which is predicated on the assumption that anthropologists can in fact identify prehistoric antecedents to extant identity-conscious social groups.... Anyone reasonably familiar with evolutionary biology would recognize immediately that they cannot do that reliably or consistently. Race and ethnicity are fleeting, transient things... There is no basis in science for thinking that present-day ethnic groups even existed as recently as 400 or 500 years ago, much less in a more remote time range.... Indian claims for ancient skeletal remains based on assertions of ethnic relationship, geographical proximity, or historical connection grounded in "pan-Indianness" are without foundation.

Geoffrey A. Clark. 1999. NAGPRA, Science and the Demon Haunted World. Skeptical Inquirer May/June.