That identification, made years before the DNA study, was itself significant. It was based on documentary evidence, family records, and the institutional processes of the National Museum of American Indian Act. But for LaPointe and his family, the DNA result was a fourth layer of confirmation — added to the oral history, the ceremonial record, and the paper documentation they had always held.
“His blood is in me,” LaPointe said, “and his genes are in me, and his DNA.”
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## Tatanka-Iyotanka: The Man Behind the Icon
To understand what it means to claim descent from Sitting Bull, it helps to understand who Sitting Bull was — not the flattened, textbook version of a warrior chief, but the fuller person that Lakota sources and careful history allow.
Tatanka-Iyotanka was born around 1831 near the Grand River in what is now South Dakota, into the Hunkpapa division of the Lakota — one of the seven council fires of the Oceti Sakowin, the Seven Council Fires, sometimes called the Great Sioux Nation. His father, Brave Bull, was known for returning from raids with weapons, food, and horses, and was a man of standing in the community. His family was prominent.
He was given the name Jumping Badger at birth and was sometimes called “Slow” as a child because of his careful, deliberate temperament. He counted coup on an enemy warrior at age fourteen — rode up to a Crow warrior in battle and touched him, demonstrating the bravery and composure that warrior societies valued over mere killing — and earned the name Sitting Bull, which his father had previously carried and now transferred to his son in recognition of the act.