The Last Question the Hair Carries

Objects carry histories that their holders may not know and that the holders of record have sometimes preferred not to examine.

Sitting Bull’s hair carried a specific history — of the man himself, of the violence and contested authority of his death, of the institutional appetite that removed it from his body, of the century it spent in museum custody, and of the family that maintained its knowledge of what the hair was and who it belonged to throughout that century.

When the LaPointe family agreed to allow a small sample to be used in the genetic study, they were making a decision about how to deploy an object that was now, after long delay, in their custody.