The coverage was, by and large, respectful of the complexity. Several outlets included LaPointe’s correction of the “identified” framing. The Smithsonian’s own coverage, through its TORCH blog, was particularly careful to credit the earlier repatriation work and the institutional determination of lineal descent that had preceded the DNA study.
What the coverage did not produce was any new development on the questions of the remains. The Mobridge site remained as it was. No exhumation permit was sought or granted, as far as public reporting indicates. The twenty tons of concrete above the burial vault remained in place. The questions of where Sitting Bull’s bones actually are — and whether the bones at Mobridge are his — remained unresolved.
The study’s contribution to those questions was the establishment of a genetic comparison baseline: Sitting Bull’s autosomal DNA profile, derived from the hair sample, now exists as a reference point against which any future analysis of the Mobridge remains could be compared. If an exhumation ever happens, and if usable DNA can be recovered from the bones, the comparison can be made.
That is, in a practical sense, one of the most concrete contributions of the 2021 study to the questions that LaPointe has said matter most to him. It is not just a historical or genealogical finding. It is a forensic baseline that makes a future resolution possible.
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## Legacy and Memory: What Sitting Bull Left
Tatanka-Iyotanka died in December 1890, shot by Indian police on a cold morning at Standing Rock, with his young son Crow Foot also dead beside him. He was buried hastily and without the ceremony his life had warranted. Parts of him ended up in places he had never been and would not have chosen: a museum storage box in Washington, D.C.; a concrete crypt on a bluff above a river town in South Dakota; a glass case in the display collections of various historical societies.