Letter from Secretary of the Interior Bruce Babbitt to Secretary of the Army Louis Caldera Regarding Disposition of the Kennewick Human Remains

This letter describes the Department of Interior's (DOI) final determination and resolution of the issues delegated to DOI by the Department of the Army (DOA) in a March 1998 interagency agreement. In this agreement, DOI agreed to make the following two determinations related to the set of human skeletal remains recovered on July 26, 1996, from Columbia Park, land controlled by the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers (COE), near the city of Kennewick, Benton County, Washington: 1) whether these human remains meet the definition for "Native American" within the meaning of the Native American Graves Protection and Repatriation Act (NAGPRA); and, if so, 2) the appropriate disposition of the remains under the terms of the statute and its implementing regulations at 43 C.F.R. Part 10.