The finding that USR1 was most closely related to Native American populations — that the Ancient Beringians were not a separate, non-Native founding group but a distinct branch of the same Native American founding lineage — directly undercuts hypotheses that have been used to question the depth and exclusivity of Indigenous American presence.

The two-migration or multiple-migration models that some researchers have proposed — models in which the first Americans were replaced by or supplemented by later, different populations — have sometimes been used in legal and political contexts to complicate Indigenous claims to the hemisphere.

If the first Americans were not the ancestors of current Native peoples, the argument goes, then current Native peoples are not the original inhabitants in the relevant sense.

The genetic evidence from USR1 and from the broader ancient American genomic record does not support this argument.