The story of how the Americas came to be peopled is still being written, one ancient genome at a time.

Kennewick Man — now known in many communities as the Ancient One, the name preferred by the tribal nations who claimed him — is one chapter in that story.

A chapter that tells us about the people who lived in the Pacific Northwest nine thousand years ago, about the routes and lives of the early inhabitants of this continent, about the physical diversity that characterized the ancient Americas.

And he is a chapter in another story — the story of how the United States has grappled with the legacy of colonization, with the rights of Indigenous peoples, with the relationship between Western science and Indigenous knowledge, with the question of who gets to own and tell and control the history of this land.

That story is also still being written.

It is being written in courtrooms where tribes fight for the repatriation of their ancestors’ remains.

It is being written in museums that are, slowly and sometimes grudgingly, returning objects and bones to the communities they came from.

It is being written in universities where a new generation of researchers is learning to conduct archaeology and anthropology in genuine partnership with Indigenous communities.

It is being written on reservations and in tribal cultural centers, where people are working to preserve languages and traditions that were nearly destroyed by a century of forced assimilation.

In all of these places, the ghost of Kennewick Man is present — not as a controversy or a legal case, but as a reminder of what is at stake when we ask the question: whose past is this?