But the science is in service of something that the communities determined from the beginning: that Kwäday Dän Ts’ìnchi deserved to be treated as a person, not as a specimen.

The glaciers of the region are continuing to retreat.

They will continue to reveal what they have held.

Some of what they reveal will be organic material — artifacts, animal remains, perhaps other human beings preserved as Kwäday Dän Ts’ìnchi was preserved.

Each such revelation is a potential opportunity to learn something about the long human history of this landscape.

Each is also a potential responsibility — to the communities whose ancestors these are, to the appropriate treatment of the dead, to the obligations that the living have always had toward those who came before.

Why The Simplified Version Misses The Point