Twelve thousand years later, science confirmed what those people already knew: he belonged here.

He had always belonged here.

And the people who came after him — all the peoples who have lived in the Americas in the twelve millennia since his burial — belong here too, in the same deep, rooted, undeniable way.

The genome said so.

The red ochre said so first.

The Communities That Were There For The Reburial

When Shane Doyle helped facilitate the reburial of the Anzick child in June 2014, he was doing something that required navigating a genuinely complex set of relationships between the research team, the Anzick family, multiple Native nations, and the broader public conversation about ancient Native American remains.

Doyle, a member of the Apsáalooke (Crow) Nation and an educator and cultural liaison, had been brought into the Anzick research process specifically to build bridges between the scientists and the Native communities whose ancestors were being studied.