The First Americans

Since being in Canada, I have been learning a lot about the Native people of North America. A common question is “who were the very First Americans?” In other words who inhabited the land first? This question has important implications for modern day land claims in the Americas. In particular, I read an article from the National Geographic called “Tracking the First Americans”. In this article, the author Hodges asks the questions of who were the First Americans and how did they get to the Americas? In answering these two questions however, I feel some important issues arise…

The first issue is that of the western fascination with facial reconstruction of the First Americans. According to Hodges, one of the most exciting aspects about the discovery of the 12,000-13,000 year old skeleton Naia in Yucatan Cave, Mexico, was that the skull was intact enough to be used as a foundation for facial reconstruction. This fascination for facial reconstruction is possibly due to modern Westerners wishing to update geographical imaginations of Native people’s appearances. Yet it is interesting that the article asks why modern Native Americans “don’t look like their ancient ancestors?” Why should they look similar given 15,000 years of selective pressures and physical body changes over that time? Are we saying that our geographical imaginations of the First Americans and the modern Native Americans are the same? In which case, are we saying the modern Native Americans are just as “violent” and “wild-type” a people as their ancestors? 

Facial reconstruction of Naia.
Source: National Geographic

Secondly, the skeleton found at Yucatan Cave was named Naia after the water nymphs of Greek mythology. By using a western name, the scientists are essentially claiming this ancestral skeleton as their own. This feeds into old issues of colonial and Western power over the claims of the Native peoples themselves. Hodges also seems to suggest the First Americans were quite advanced people but he does this by employing western values of “advancement”, namely exploitation of natural resources and settlement in one geographical area, two factors which may differ from indigenous views on what constitutes an advanced society.

Thirdly, it is important to look not only at the scientific theories behind who the First Americans were and how they got to the Americas, but also at the moral issues of who should have the right to the skeletons (the scientists or the descendants of the skeletons) as well as how we are to refer to this skeleton that was once a live human being. Regarding Naia’s discovery, phrases like “her bad luck [in falling to her death in the cave] is science’s good fortune” could be interpreted as the scientists regarding this one-time human as simply a scientific object to study, while for many of the Native people, there is significant interest in giving the skeleton a burial in line with tradition for deceased relatives.  

When thinking about questions of who were the First Americans it’s all good trying to work out when and how they got to the Americas (as discussed in Hodges’ article), but it’s also important to think about why scientists ask the questions they do, and how those questions may reflect both desire for scientific understanding as well as historical oppression of Native Americans.