In 1953, a group that included members of a chamber of commerce and a local booster organization in Mobridge, South Dakota, conducted an operation in which they disinterred what they claimed were Sitting Bull’s remains and reburied them near Mobridge, on the South Dakota side of the state line.

The operation was carried out without the consent of Sitting Bull’s family or the Standing Rock Sioux Tribe.

The 1953 reinterment has been disputed ever since.

Questions include whether the remains that were moved were genuinely Sitting Bull’s, what condition those remains were in, and what authority the people conducting the operation had to do what they did.

The site near Mobridge now has a monument, and that monument has become a point of contention in ongoing disputes about where Sitting Bull’s “real” burial site is and who should have authority over it.

The LaPointe family’s position on these questions has been consistent and specific.