Each year of warming releases more material from these archives.

Some of that material will be found and properly documented.

Much will be exposed and then degraded before anyone can reach it.

The Indigenous communities with traditional territory in the affected regions — communities like the Champagne and Aishihik First Nations, the various Tlingit communities of the Alaska Panhandle, and many others — have the most direct stake in what these melting archives contain.

The material coming out of the ice is their cultural heritage — material objects, yes, but also the physical presence of their ancestors in the landscape, evidence of their communities’ long occupation of specific territories, physical confirmation of the knowledge that their oral traditions have preserved.