The governance framework that was possible for the Kwäday Dän Ts’ìnchi project reflects this relative recency, and it produced a research process that was fundamentally different from the Ötzi investigation in its ethical structure.

Other glacially or ice-preserved humans have been found in North America — some in permafrost rather than moving glacial ice, some much older than Kwäday Dän Ts’ìnchi, some in better or worse states of preservation.

None has generated the combination of scientific productivity and community governance that the Kwäday Dän Ts’ìnchi project achieved, partly because the specific circumstances — the preservation quality, the time depth, the governance framework of the Champagne and Aishihik First Nations, the willingness of the scientific community to work within that framework — were unusually favorable.

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