This understanding of the dead as continuing to be in relationship with the living is relevant to the story of USR1 in ways that the scientific literature does not always acknowledge.

When the Tanana Athabascan communities with traditional territory at Upward Sun River engaged in consultation about the research at the site, they were not simply navigating a regulatory process or providing input on a scientific project that was fundamentally separate from their own understanding of the world.

They were engaging with questions about the treatment of a person — an infant who had been part of a community, who had been buried with care, and who had been resting in the earth for eleven and a half thousand years — from within a cultural framework in which that person’s status as a community member did not automatically expire.

The scientific finding that USR1 represented a distinct ancient lineage — one that may or may not have direct biological continuity with modern Athabascan communities — does not change this relationship in the way that some outside observers might assume.