WPBN: The renowned Lakota leader Sitting Bull’s great-grandson and closest living relative is Ernie LaPointe, a 73-year-old South Dakota citizen. A groundbreaking DNA analysis of a preserved Sitting Bull hair lock confirmed this link.
Sitting Bull, a Hunkpapa Lakota Sioux medicine man and chief who was born in 1831, is renowned for organizing the Sioux tribes against the incursion of settlers in the late 1800s.
LaPointe’s decades-long effort to move his ancestor’s remains to a more culturally relevant burial site is strengthened by this revelation. Sitting Bull, also known as Tatanka Iyotake, was buried near Mobridge, South Dakota, after being murdered by Native American police in 1890, according to NBC News.
As a result of his prophetic visions, Sitting Bull is remembered for leading the unified Sioux tribes to victory against the U.S. Army’s 7th Cavalry at the Battle of Little Bighorn in the Great Sioux War of 1876. A pair of wool leggings and a lock of his hair were taken by an Army doctor at Fort Yates, North Dakota, when he passed away.
They were kept at the National Museum of Natural History in Washington, D.C., from 1896 until being given back to LaPointe’s family more than ten years ago.
It has been a hard journey for LaPointe, who grew up watching movies and seeing his own people as monsters, to finally connect with his past. Because they were such great heroes, I would constantly watch the movies and aspire to be Randolph Scott or John Wayne. “And the native guys were always the bad guys,” LaPointe said in an interview with The Independent. “These people just made that up as a fantasy.
From the 1950s to the present, these classic Westerns consistently present themselves in a positive light while portraying us as villains. In reality, though, it’s the opposite. They are the murders, scalpers, torturers, rapists, and villains. Not us.
Additionally, LaPointe had desired to obtain Sitting Bull’s bones in order to bury his great-grandfather properly. Eske Willerslev, an ecology and evolution professor at the University of Cambridge, wanted to assist LaPointe because he had fallen in love with Sitting Bull. “I’ve always been extremely fascinated by Sitting Bull because, in many ways, he was the perfect leader — brave and clever, but also kind,” stated Willerslev.
In addition to helping LaPointe, Willerslev, a DNA researcher, wanted to examine the renowned leader’s DNA. “If you want to do this, I think I can help you,” Willerslev remembers saying to LaPointe himself. Willerslev is also the director of the University of Copenhagen’s Centre of Excellence in GeoGenetics. Before accepting Willerslev’s assistance, LaPointe considered the scientists’ motivations.
According to Yahoo News, he invited Willerslev to participate in a ritual that included chanting, drumming, and a medicine man in a dimly lit room. “A blue-green light appeared in the middle of the room — and I am a natural scientist so I thought, well, that’s the medicine man running around with a lamp, but when I reached out in the darkness, there was nobody there,” Willerslev remembered. After they had eaten buffalo meat and smoked a Lakota pipe, LaPointe informed him that the ghostly light had been Sitting Bull’s spirit and blessed the research.
Upon obtaining Sitting Bull’s hair, Willerslev discovered that it had been kept at room temperature in the National Museum of Natural History for almost a century, causing it to deteriorate considerably. “There was very little DNA in the hair — way too little for established methods of DNA analysis,” he stated.
Conventional DNA analysis focused on sex-specific genetic matches, including identifying the mitochondrial DNA that mothers pass on to their children or the Y chromosome that is passed on to male descendants. According to LaPointe, those techniques could not be applied to establish a familial relationship because he was linked to Sitting Bull on his mother’s side.
The relationship between Sitting Bull and LaPointe had to be established using a new method devised by Willerslev’s team. The hunt for “autosomal DNA,” or non-sex-specific DNA that humans inherit from both their mother and father, took more than 14 years to produce.
Sitting Bull’s scalp lock was repatriated to Ernie LaPointe in 2007, but before he would hand it over to Dr Willerslev, he wanted to know the scientist’s intentions were pure. He asked Willerslev to take part in a ceremony involving a medicine man, drummers and chanting
— Issam Ahmed (@IssamAhmed) October 27, 2021
They subsequently established the familial connection by comparing Sitting Bull’s hair lock’s autosomal DNA to DNA samples from LaPointe and other Lakota Sioux.
Willerslev is enthusiastic about autosomal DNA’s possible applications. Willerslev stated, “You could look into anyone you want, from criminals like Jesse James to the Romanovs, the family of the Russian tsar.” “Old DNA, which is usually taken from bones, hair, or teeth, can be analyzed in the same manner if it is available.”
LaPointe informed him the eerie light had been Sitting Bull’s spirit, giving his blessing to the study. BUT, LaPointe gave Willerslev only 4cm of the more than 30cm long lock and burned the rest, which he said was what the spirit had wanted
— Issam Ahmed (@IssamAhmed) October 27, 2021
Considering the possibility of further exploiting Indigenous communities, Kim TallBear, an associate professor in the University of Alberta’s faculty of Native Studies, stated that they were hesitant to enlist scientists in order to prove LaPointe’s kinship with Sitting Bull.
TallBear went on to say that the Lakota and other tribal communities were certain of LaPointe’s genealogical ties to Sitting Bull, but they required evidence to acquire the latter’s remains. ”
Any time we participate with a scientist in reaffirming genetic definitions of what it means to be Indigenous, we are de facto helping to uphold their definitions over our own,” stated TallBear. “But we’re stuck between a rock and a hard place because settler institutions control the disposition of Sitting Bull’s remains,” she said.
