He was specific about the problem. He pointed to the phrase “identified” as the issue. He and his sisters had not been “identified” by the study. They had always known who they were. The Smithsonian had verified the lineage before Willerslev’s team published anything. The DNA study provided a scientific confirmation of what was already established — not a discovery of something previously unknown.
This objection is not petty. It reflects a substantive point about the epistemic hierarchy that is implicitly applied to Indigenous knowledge and oral tradition.
When historians or journalists describe a family relationship as “identified” only upon genetic confirmation, the implicit message is that the prior evidence — the oral history, the ceremonial knowledge, the documentary record, the institutional verification — was insufficient to establish the fact. The DNA test is the real proof; everything else was just a claim.
This hierarchy is not justified by the actual reliability of different evidence types. Oral traditions in many Indigenous communities have been shown to preserve accurate information across generations about historical events, genealogical relationships, and ecological conditions. The Smithsonian’s lineal-descendant determination was made through rigorous documentary review, not mere assertion. The DNA test added something, but it did not create the relationship from scratch.
LaPointe’s framing — that the DNA is “a scientific connection,” a fourth layer added to three already-existing forms of evidence — is more accurate to what actually happened. He was confirmed, not identified. There is a real difference.
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## The Ongoing Question of the Remains
As of the research conducted for this article, the question of what will happen to the remains at Mobridge remains unresolved.