The Bone Lady: Life As a Forensic Anthropologist

14. Indian Woman

INDIAN WOMAN like to use myself as an example of what our wonderful melting pot in America is like. Hill dirt may be in my blood, but ethnically, and even racially, I am a mix with ancestry among the Germans, Dutch, Scotch-Irish, Native Americans . . . maybe even others. Personally I prefer to think of myself as simply an American, though I am proud of my ethnic roots—all of them. My great-grandmother Rena Miller was Alabama Choctaw. This information came from my great-aunt Eve Huffman when she was ninety-five—I guess it's so. In the late twentieth century it seems very popular to claim Native American roots, especially Cherokee ones. Perhaps the appeal of this tribe is due to the fact that the Cherokee— "beautiful people," as they are known—have retained an aloofness that whites grudgingly admire. Maybe it is also because the word "Cherokee " rolls off the tongue with such a lovely sound. Working in forensic anthropology necessitates that I make statements regarding a person's racial origin. The reason is obvious: by pro14 I 78 THE BONE LADY viding a "race" designation I can help law enforcement to identify the unidentified much faster. The designation is made possible by the fact that skeletal variation does exist among the three major racial categories typically found in the United States: Caucasoid, Negroid, and Mongoloid. Caucasoid refers to people of white European descent; Negroid to those with black or African American features; and Mongoloid to Native Americans or American Indians, Asians, and Eskimos . Of course, mixed ancestry like mine complicates the job of determining a race profile, as does regional variation of features. In such cases, racial identity may still be suggested. The variation among populations can be seen in the skull. The shape of the eye orbits, the shape of the nasal opening, alveolar prognathism (anterior protrusion of the dental arch), and projection of the cheek bones are some of the characteristics that distinguish the races. These attributes can be assessed through observations and measurements of the skull. Their differences resulted thousands of years ago from groups' long-term residence in diverse geographic areas remote from one another. There, natural selection increased the frequency, or presence, in the different gene pools of certain characteristics that were beneficial for survival. Different climates selected for both overt and subtle variations in characteristics for different populations. Anthropology textbooks aptly point out that more variation exists within racial groups than between them. However, the forensic identification process requires a label because, in a practical sense, we humans compartmentalize other humans. One way in which we do this is by racial or ethnic designations. They help us organize our observations about our world. Noting physical variations among populations is not racism; arriving at social prejudices based on these observations , of course, is. Many people view skin color as a criterion for race. Skin color, one of those features we immediately notice about someone, is one of the poorest of all physical characteristics by which to assess race; indeed, it is not used by anthropologists to make identifications. By 1998 there INDIAN WOMAN 79 were almost 270 million people in this country—and probably very close to that many different "colors" of skin. Anthropologists debate among themselves whether biological races for humans exist, but the racial categories meaningful to them do not include the everyday descriptions of race with details like the shade of someone's skin. Assigning a race designation and building a skeletal profile are tasks not restricted to modern forensic cases. For more than a century, anthropologists in this country have studied the physical remains of ancient Native Americans, some of which are thousands of years old. They have provided insight into the demographics and health status over time of these populations. In recent years, however, people have become particularly sensitive about the ownership or guardianship of ancient human remains, especially those of ancestral Native Americans . Indeed, many Native Americans hold present-day physical anthropologists accountable for nineteenth- and early-twentieth-century removal of their ancestors from their graves. Some of them do not like the idea of scientific study of skeletal remains in general and call for the return of all ancestral remains to extant tribes. To demonstrate to extant Native American groups that we physical anthropologists could make a valuable contribution to the understanding of the ancient and recent past, in 1988 I traveled...