The obligation — described by members of the Champagne and Aishihik First Nations and by the Tlingit communities involved in the project — to receive him appropriately, to perform the ceremonies the dead require, to ensure that he is returned to the earth in a way that reflects the values of the community and the specific relationships that his biological connection to the living establishes.

This obligation is not sentimental.

In the cultural frameworks of the Northwest Coast and subarctic interior peoples, the obligations that the living have toward the dead are specific, structured, and serious.

The matrilineal clan system creates specific relationships between people and specific responsibilities that flow from those relationships.

The discovery of a person from the past who is biologically connected to the living, within a system that takes maternal-line kinship seriously as a basis for obligation, is not simply an interesting finding.

It is a claim — a claim on the attention, care, and ceremony of those to whom the finding connects.