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What can heritage mean for a territory that has never been decolonized? The implementation of the Native American Graves Protection and Repatriation Act (1990) with regard to the Standing Rock Native American reservation demonstrates how those involved in heritage preservation and repatriation can simultaneously bolster the classic vision of heritage as a set of objects and practices to be preserved, while attacking the colonial nature of the institutions used to protect heritage. Far from being a mere act of transfer between sovereign States, repatriation challenges the very notion of heritage by permitting the performance of rituals whose organizers – spiritual specialists recognised by law – blur the distinction between the dead and the living, as well as been specialists and non-specialists. More than anything, it highlights the central role of family ties in the local socio-political uses of heritage.