The debate was important while it lasted, not because its ultimate answer was uncertain — many researchers always doubted the Paleoamerican hypothesis on general scientific grounds — but because it was used to justify specific legal and institutional decisions that affected the lives of living Indigenous communities.

The denial of the Spirit Cave repatriation request, sustained for more than twenty years, was partly justified by the unresolved nature of the scientific debate.

Resolving the debate — through the specific partnership between Willerslev and the Tribe — changed the institutional calculus and made the repatriation possible.

Science in service of justice is not a simple or uncomplicated thing.

The scientific process has its own interests and its own momentum, and those interests do not always align with the interests of the communities most directly affected by scientific findings.

The Spirit Cave case was one instance where the alignment was achieved — imperfectly, after years of misalignment, and through the specific efforts of specific individuals — and where the result served both the advancement of knowledge and the rectification of a long-standing wrong.