A federally recognized Indigenous tribe in the U.S. for the first time has led research using DNA to show their ancestral history.

The Picuris Pueblo, a sovereign nation in New Mexico, has oral histories and cultural traditions that link the tribe to the region of Chaco Canyon, one of the ancient centers of Pueblo culture and society.

“We’ve been telling our stories as long as time immemorial,” said Picuris Lt. Gov. Craig Quanchello. But he said those traditions were often “overlooked and erased.”

As members of the Picuris Pueblo seek a greater voice in shaping decisions about the future of Chaco Canyon, where debates about oil and gas drilling loom, leaders including Quanchello decided that using DNA sequencing to complement or corroborate their oral histories could be a useful tool. The group began a collaboration with an international team of geneticists.

The findings, published Thursday in the journal Nature, show close links between the genomes of 13 current members of Picuris and ancient DNA recovered from 16 Picuris individuals who lived between 1300 A.D. and 1500 A.D. in or near Chaco Canyon.