Modern Blackfoot people descend from an ancient ice age lineage

Nations of the Blackfoot Confederacy have long fought to maintain control over their land and water. Oral traditions and archaeological evidence indicate the Blackfoot Indigenous peoples and their ancestors have inhabited a broad swatch of North America for more than 10,000 years. A study published today in Science Advances reinforces that connection. Genetic data confirm modern Blackfoot people are closely related to those who lived on the land hundreds of years ago . The findings also suggest Blackfoot people descend from a previously unknown genetic lineage extending back roughly 18,000 years ago, when people first populated the Americas —evidence that could bolster their claims to their land and water rights. The results may be useful for contemporary people because they provide “a different kind of data to fill out the contours” of Indigenous histories, says Kim Tallbear, a University of Alberta professor of Native studies who was not involved with the research. Today, the Blackfoot Confederacy shoulders the U.S.-Canada border, comprising the Nations of Blackfeet, Kainai-Blood, Peigan-Piikani, and Siksika. Blackfoot people know that their ancestors, since time immemorial, have lived across the Rocky Mountains’s eastern slopes and adjacent plains of what is now Montana, Alberta, and Saskatchewan. Indigenous oral traditions and archaeological evidence indicate that more than 10,000 years ago these anc...
Source: ScienceNOW - Category: Science Source Type: news