Some community members and Indigenous scholars welcomed the scientific confirmation of deep American roots.

The finding that an ancient woman in the Yucatán carried a founding American haplogroup was consistent with what Indigenous oral traditions had always maintained — that their people had been in the Americas since long before the arrival of Europeans, that the land was theirs by right of ancient presence and not merely by the accident of historical circumstance.

Other Indigenous scholars raised questions about the framing of the discovery and the coverage.

The language of “discovery” — which was used extensively in coverage of the Hoyo Negro findings — erased the ongoing presence of the Maya and other Indigenous peoples of the Yucatán, who had been living above those caves and knew the cenotes of the region long before any cave diver entered the system.