The study also does not establish anything about LaPointe’s status relative to Sitting Bull that DNA alone could establish. DNA does not determine tribal citizenship, cultural belonging, or sovereignty. It does not assign inheritance rights to specific objects or remains. It does not resolve disputes about what should happen to Sitting Bull’s burial sites. These are distinct questions, governed by law, by tribal governance, by family authority, and by the protocols of Lakota culture — not by a molecular comparison.
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## The Genealogical Framework: Four Lines of Evidence
LaPointe has consistently framed the DNA study not as his first or primary proof of his relationship to Sitting Bull, but as the most recent addition to a set of evidence that he already possessed.
In interviews and in his own public statements, he has described four kinds of evidence that together constitute his claim:
**Oral history:** The stories his mother told him, and that were passed through the family, about who they were and where they came from. In Lakota tradition, oral history is not considered less reliable than written records — it is a different kind of record, transmitted deliberately and with care, and the cultural understanding is that people do not fabricate their ancestry within the traditions of the community. LaPointe has said that the Lakota do not invent family stories, and that the oral transmission of genealogical knowledge carries real weight in Lakota understanding of identity and lineage.
**Ceremonial connection:** The ceremonial and spiritual practices that tie a family to its ancestry in Lakota culture. LaPointe is a Sun Dancer, and the ceremonial dimension of his relationship to his great-grandfather is not separable, in his understanding, from the factual question of biological descent.