This persistence has its own historical meaning.

The mystery endures because the organization alleged to possess the remains has not cooperated with investigation, and because the legal mechanisms that might compel cooperation have not proven effective.

The endurance of the mystery is, in this sense, not simply a factual gap waiting to be filled.

It is a statement about the relationship between institutional power — the kind of power concentrated in Skull and Bones’ membership, with its two presidential families and its dozens of senators and CIA directors — and the dignity of the dead, specifically the dead of Indigenous communities that have historically had little legal or political power to enforce their rights.

Geronimo spent the last twenty-three years of his life asking to go home.