The genetic analysis was conducted on biological material, compared against living reference samples.

But the photographs remain part of the broader evidentiary record that contextualizes the study’s findings and the family’s long-maintained claim.

The Community That Carries the Memory

The Hunkpapa Lakota community that Sitting Bull was part of — the community that his descendants are part of — is not a historical artifact.

It is a living community, maintaining its language, its cultural practices, its governance, and its relationships to the land and the people who have defined Lakota identity across generations.

The Standing Rock Sioux Tribe, which has governmental authority over the Standing Rock Reservation, is the contemporary institutional form of the community that Sitting Bull lived and died in.