The Sitting Bull study’s approach — conducting the research with the family’s full participation and consent, framing the findings carefully, and acknowledging the limits of what the genetic evidence establishes — reflects a more ethically sophisticated approach than has characterized some earlier ancient DNA research.

NAGPRA, the Smithsonian, and the Repatriation Landscape

The 1990 Native American Graves Protection and Repatriation Act was the result of decades of advocacy by Native communities and their allies, and its passage represented a significant shift in the legal relationship between museums and the Indigenous communities whose material heritage those museums held.

NAGPRA required museums and federal agencies that receive federal funding to inventory their collections of Native American human remains, funerary objects, sacred objects, and objects of cultural patrimony, and to notify affiliated tribal nations.

Upon request, those holdings were required to be repatriated — returned to the affiliated tribes — unless the institution could demonstrate a right of possession that overrode the repatriation obligation.