                                                                                When William Bates, an elder 
When William Bates, an elder 
 of the Baakantji people of New 
 South Wales, found a skeleton 
 by a river in 201.4, he identified 
 it as an Aboriginal male. The 
 mouthwas wide open."To me, 
 he was crying for help;' Bates 
 recalls,"so I said, FE help you!' 
   The bones bore obvious 
 signs of violence. In most 
 murder mysteries, establish- 
 ing the time of death is one of 
 the first things detectives do, 
 and in the course of an initial 
 study, researchers assumed 
 he had been killed during the 
 bloodshed between British 
 colonizers andA-ustralia's in- 
 digenous peoples in the late 
 18th and early 19th centuries. 
   But these early assump- 
 tions would be challenged 
 when the body, now named 
 Kaakutja, meaning "older 
 brother," was examined by
 AN ABORIGINE WIELDING A BOOMERANG, DEPICTED IN A GERMAN SCIENCE BOOK, CIRCA 1890

