The Anzick case was shaped by all of this history, and the researchers who conducted it were aware of that shaping.

The consultation process they undertook was not perfect — few such processes are, in the specific sense of satisfying every stakeholder — but it was genuine in a way that much earlier research on ancient Native American remains had not been.

It included Indigenous participation in research design.

It resulted in repatriation and reburial.

And it contributed, through the publication of the genome findings and the accompanying account of the consultation process, to a model that subsequent researchers could learn from and build on.

What science owes the past, in cases like this, is not silence or refusal to investigate.