That the Americas had been populated by white people first, and that Native Americans had displaced them.

This narrative — which some researchers have called the “Solutrean hypothesis,” after the Solutrean culture of ancient western Europe — had been floating around the fringes of archaeology for years.

It was not, and is not, supported by the mainstream scientific consensus.

It was, however, enormously appealing to certain political and ideological groups who used it to argue, essentially, that Native American land claims were invalid because “white people were here first.”

The fringe groups who embraced this interpretation seized on Kennewick Man as their evidence.

He became, in these circles, a symbol — a prop in an argument about race, rights, and who deserves to belong to which land.

The Native tribes who had filed for his repatriation were watching this happen, and they were not surprised.

They had seen this pattern before.

They had seen scientific discoveries used as political ammunition against their communities.

They had seen their ancestors’ bones turned into arguments against their own existence as peoples with rights.