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Comment by einpoklum | Hacker News Reader

The thing is, the context of such arguments may be an attempt by some pipeline-laying, mining or real-estate company to put their hands on ancestral native american lands. A lot of incentive to claim "we science-d it up and it's all fine and we can take your land."

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How would testing a skeleton's DNA help a company put their hands on ancestral lands? If a company wants to use the land you throw those bones and artifacts in the trash and never tell.

I don't buy the argument that, because these other people might abuse the science for political or commercial ends, therefore it's ok for some other people to abuse the science for their own ends. Let's just fight abuse of the science.

I don't buy the way you're constructing your argument! You're saying that both party A and party B wants to "abuse the science for political or commercial ends". But the political ends of party B is to prevent the destruction of their native lands, including the historical artifacts within that land, by party A. One of these is defensive, only abusing the system to prevent destructive abuse, and one is offensive.

>Let's just fight abuse of the science.

We'd all love this, I think. But what about before that? I don't think it's in our interests to not use the rules to our advantage before a new ruleset (that's non-abusive) has been put in place.

I think there's an argument there when it comes to archaeological finds that are identifiably associated with a particular modern cultural group. There's a matter of scale though. 10,000 year old finds, sorry I don't see the argument. The australopithecine finds in Africa are also tribal ancestors.

That's not the argument. The argument is that what might be presented to you as inappropriate conduct by native-american tribes may be mis-represented, or taken out of the context of posturing by interested parties in disputes over land access. So I would treat reports of such stereotypical behavior with more than one grain of salt.

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