He was found long ago — many years before the DNA study, many years before the full scientific analysis, many years before the seventeen living relatives learned of their connection to him.

And he was a person, found, in the specific sense that finding someone you have been connected to all along but have not recently seen is different from simply discovering an unknown object.

The communities of the Champagne and Aishihik First Nations and the broader Indigenous world of the Northwest Coast and subarctic interior have always known that their ancestors crossed the mountains, lived in the landscape, died in the ice and the passes and the rivers.

Kwäday Dän Ts’ìnchi was not discovered in the sense of being revealed to people who had no knowledge of his kind.