The remains of people killed in military engagements — sometimes including people killed by the military doing the collecting — ended up in federal museum collections.

Sitting Bull’s hair and leggings were not human remains in the same category as skeletal material, but they were objects removed from his body without authorization, and they carried the specific significance of being associated with one of the most important figures in Lakota and American history.

Their presence in the Smithsonian’s collection was not incidental.

The legal framework that eventually provided a mechanism for addressing this situation was the Native American Graves Protection and Repatriation Act — NAGPRA — signed into law in 1990.

NAGPRA required federal agencies and federally funded museums to inventory their holdings of Native American human remains, funerary objects, sacred objects, and objects of cultural patrimony, and to work with the relevant tribal nations to repatriate those holdings.