The Spirit Cave DNA results did not just resolve one legal dispute.

They provided the clearest genetic evidence yet that the earliest well-preserved Americans were the ancestors of modern Native peoples — that there was genetic continuity between the oldest known residents of the Great Basin and the communities that have lived there ever since.

This finding mattered beyond the Spirit Cave case.

It contributed to a growing body of genomic evidence that was consistently supporting the same conclusion: Native American peoples are the original inhabitants of the Americas, their connection to this hemisphere is ancient and continuous, and the scientific debate about the first Americans — whatever remaining questions it holds about timing, routes, and population dynamics — is not a debate about whether modern Native peoples belong here.

They do.