Even after that federal citizenship law, Native voting rights remained contested in several states.

State constitutional provisions, residency rules, guardianship theories, and other barriers continued to restrict political participation.

Standing Bear’s victory therefore belongs in the history of Native civil rights, but it should not be turned into a fictional finish line.

It opened a door.

Other doors remained closed.

And in the decades after the case, federal policy moved in directions that were often aggressively assimilationist.