The result — seventeen people with closely matching maternal-line sequences — was not just a scientific finding.

It was a community revelation.

Seventeen individuals, from communities across the broad region associated with the discovery, learned that they shared a maternal ancestor with the man from the ice.

Seventeen people whose daily lives are embedded in communities with specific histories, specific languages, specific ceremonies and social structures, found themselves identified as biological relatives of someone who had crossed the same mountains centuries before.

The cultural framework within which those seventeen people understood their connection to Kwäday Dän Ts’ìnchi was already in place before the DNA study was conducted.