They belong to the matrilineal clans that his social world was organized around.

They fish, some of them, in rivers where salmon have been running since long before he was born.

They cross, some of them, the same mountain passes that he was crossing when he died.

The DNA study did not reveal a connection that was previously unknown in any fundamental sense.

The communities of the Champagne and Aishihik and the Tlingit peoples have always known that their ancestors crossed those mountains, fished those rivers, traded between coast and interior, and lived in a world where the connections between people on both sides of the divide were ongoing and real.

What the DNA study revealed was the specific, biological, molecular thread connecting one particular individual from the past to seventeen particular individuals in the present.