The tribe is not without standing in this story. Standing Rock has maintained sites, stories, and ceremonies connected to Sitting Bull. The community that surrounds his memory on Standing Rock is not simply an interested bystander — it is the community in which he lived and died, the community whose police shot him, the community that buried him and has maintained some relationship with his memory through all the subsequent disruptions.
LaPointe’s position is that lineal descent gives his family the primary authority over Sitting Bull’s biological remains — his body, his genetic material, the decisions about where he should be buried. He does not claim authority over Standing Rock’s cultural relationship with Sitting Bull’s memory, over the tribe’s historical connection to his legacy, or over what the community does with its own sites and programs. These are different kinds of authority, and they do not necessarily conflict.
The conflict arises specifically around questions of the remains: who decides what happens to the bones at Mobridge, who has standing to petition for or against their exhumation, and where any reburied remains should go. These are legal and institutional questions in which the framework — NAGPRA, state burial law, South Dakota permitting requirements — gives different answers than a purely cultural or community-based framework might.
LaPointe’s stated plan is to eventually petition South Dakota for a permit to exhume the Mobridge remains, conduct DNA analysis to confirm their identity, and then pursue a reburial with appropriate traditional ceremony. He has not described this plan as something he expects to accomplish soon or without difficulty. He has said “when the time is right” — language that suggests he is under no illusion that the process will be simple.