The Nez Perce maintain active archaeological and cultural preservation programs.

The Colville Confederated Tribes, whose members showed the strongest genetic affinity with Kennewick Man in the 2015 DNA study, have been increasingly engaged with the scientific community in collaborative research.

These collaborations represent a different kind of science than the science that dominated the Kennewick case for most of its duration — one that begins from a position of respect for Indigenous sovereignty and Indigenous knowledge, rather than viewing those things as obstacles to scientific progress.

It is not a perfect model.

The tensions between scientific inquiry and Indigenous rights are real and persistent, and no collaborative framework fully resolves them.

But it is a better model than what came before.

And the Kennewick case — for all the pain it caused, for all the years it consumed, for all the wounds it reopened — helped make it possible.

FINAL SECTION: THE RIVER REMEMBERS

The Columbia River is still there.

It flows through Washington and Oregon as it has flowed for millions of years — broad, powerful, cold, carrying snowmelt from mountains hundreds of miles away.