Their connection to the river is intimate and ancient.

When they spoke about Kennewick Man, they spoke about him as one of their own people.

The legal battle over Kennewick Man cost these communities enormous resources — time, money, emotional energy, the repeated reopening of wounds related to colonization and the theft of their ancestors’ remains.

In some sense, they will never fully get those resources back.

But what they gained — in addition to the return of their ancestor — was a story that the entire country now knows.

A story about who they are, what they believe, and why it matters.

And they gained, in the DNA findings, scientific confirmation of what they had always known: that this land has been their land for a very, very long time.

SECTION 16: THE MAN HIMSELF — A FINAL PORTRAIT

Before we close this story, let’s return one more time to the man himself.

We have spent many pages on the controversy he caused — the scientific debates, the legal battles, the political agendas, the morphological analysis, the DNA breakthrough.