The finding is therefore most accurately described as identifying seventeen people who share a maternal ancestor with Kwäday Dän Ts’ìnchi — not seventeen people who are directly descended from him personally.

The distinction matters for both scientific accuracy and cultural appropriateness.

Direct lineal descent is a specific genealogical claim that the mitochondrial DNA evidence cannot establish with certainty.

Shared maternal ancestry is what the evidence supports.

This distinction does not diminish the significance of the finding.

It is extraordinary, across any span of centuries, to be able to say that a specific biological connection — a maternal lineage — links a person preserved in ice to seventeen living people in the same broad region.

The connection is real.