He was not simply an athlete who lost a sports dispute.

He was a Sac and Fox man who had come through the boarding school system, who had been celebrated by the country whose citizenship he did not yet hold, and who was then stripped of that celebration based on rules that the institution that stripped him had not even properly followed.

“He represented this country before it even recognized Native Americans as citizens,” said Representative Deb Haaland — herself a citizen of Laguna Pueblo and later the first Native American to serve as Secretary of the Interior — in her statement welcoming the 2022 reinstatement.

“He did so with humility and grace.