The scientists could not study the remains.

The tribes could not bury them.

And the man who had died beside the Columbia River eight thousand years ago waited, in a padlocked steel cabinet at the Army Corps of Engineers’ facility in Walla Walla, Washington, for someone to decide what to do with him.

SECTION 8: THE LEGAL BATTLE — NINE YEARS IN THE COURTS

The lawsuit — formally titled Bonnichsen et al. v.

United States — moved through the federal court system with the grinding slowness that characterizes legal proceedings of genuine complexity and consequence.

The core legal question was deceptively simple: did NAGPRA apply to remains this old?

NAGPRA’s language required a demonstrable “cultural affiliation” between ancient remains and a present-day tribal group.

The law was written with historical remains in mind — items and bodies from a few hundred years ago, close enough in time that connections to living communities could be established through documentation, oral history, and cultural continuity.

But Kennewick Man was 8,400 years old.