Lakota kinship is complex, comprehensive, and organized around principles that are not reducible to biological descent as understood in Western scientific frameworks.

Lakota kinship systems include extensive networks of recognized relationships — among people who are biologically related, among people who are related through adoption and other forms of chosen family, among people connected through spiritual and ceremonial ties — that constitute the social fabric of Lakota community life.

The concept of who counts as family, who carries specific obligations and responsibilities to other people, and who has standing to speak on behalf of a relative or an ancestor is defined within Lakota cultural frameworks in ways that do not map cleanly onto the genetic concept of biological relationship.

A person’s standing in relation to Sitting Bull’s memory, in Lakota terms, is not determined by the percentage of genetic material they share with him.