This principle is relevant beyond the Sitting Bull case.

The history of federal Indian policy in the United States includes a long and damaging tradition of using biological concepts — specifically blood quantum, the percentage of “Indian blood” an individual carries — as a mechanism for determining tribal membership and access to federal recognition and benefits.

Blood quantum requirements have no parallel in how any other community in the United States defines its membership, and they have been criticized by many tribal nations and scholars as an externally imposed standard that undermines Indigenous peoples’ right to determine their own membership on their own terms.

The use of DNA analysis in the context of the Sitting Bull study is categorically different from blood quantum determinations: it is a scientific tool used with community consent to document a specific claimed relationship, not an externally imposed standard for determining who counts as Indigenous.