It was taken without the consent of his family or his community.

It moved through institutional hands — medical museum, national museum — for more than a century.

It was the subject of an investigation that found the taking had lacked proper authority.

It was returned to the family in 2007.

The return was not a simple transfer of an object.

It was a recognition — partial, formal, and long overdue — that the object had always belonged to the family and to the community, that its removal had been wrong, and that the institutional framework that had held it was capable of acknowledging that wrong and beginning to address it.

When the family subsequently agreed to allow a small sample to be used in the DNA study, that decision was made from a position of ownership and authority that had not existed as long as the object was in institutional custody.