And the finding that Indigenous people have been in the region is not a new discovery.

The Indigenous communities of the Northwest Coast and subarctic interior have never needed a glacially preserved body to know they have been in their homelands for generations beyond counting.

What the Kwäday Dän Ts’ìnchi project provided was not proof of Indigenous presence for communities that have always known that presence.

It provided a specific, material, scientifically documented connection between a particular individual from the past and particular living people — a connection that the communities involved found meaningful in their own cultural terms.

The story of Kwäday Dän Ts’ìnchi is more interesting and more important than the simplified version, precisely because it is more specific, more uncertain, more honest about what can and cannot be known, and more genuinely embedded in the lives and knowledge of the communities it involves.