Those tensions persist, and they will persist for as long as institutional collections hold unrepresentated ancient remains, as long as the legal framework for NAGPRA is inadequately funded and inconsistently applied, and as long as the research community has not fully developed the practices that genuine Indigenous partnership requires.

But it demonstrated that alignment was possible — and it provided a specific, well-documented example of what that alignment could look like when both parties were willing to do the work.

The Continuing Story

The Spirit Cave Man’s story does not end with his reburial.

His genome is part of the scientific record.

The data derived from his remains continues to be cited, compared against, and built upon in new studies of ancient American genetics.

Each new ancient American genome that is published is placed in relationship to his, and his genomic profile provides one of the anchor points for the expanding understanding of how the Americas were first populated.