The researchers noted that Indigenous observations provided data covering periods before satellite monitoring began, effectively extending the temporal range of sea ice data back into periods that instrumental science could not directly access.

The Iñupiat observers were not simply providing confirmation of what scientists already knew.

They were providing unique data — knowledge that existed nowhere else.

This is the direct continuation of what Ada Blackjack demonstrated in microcosm on Wrangel Island in 1923: that the knowledge housed in Indigenous communities about Arctic environments is not folkloric or sentimental.

It is empirical, detailed, and practically essential.

It is knowledge that Western science cannot fully replicate and that, in many cases, Western science is still catching up to.