LaPointe has said he believes his great-grandfather’s remains are at the Mobridge site. He says this based on family knowledge and on his assessment of the historical record. But he has also been clear that confirming the identification would require DNA analysis — extracting genetic material from the Mobridge remains and comparing it with the established genetic profile from the hair sample and from LaPointe himself.
That analysis has not been done. No permit to exhume the remains has been granted. No exhumation is currently scheduled, as far as public reporting indicates. The concrete poured in 1953 was designed to make removal difficult; doing so would require significant work.
The situation at the Mobridge site has its own complications. The Sitting Bull Monument Foundation acquired the property and undertook improvements. LaPointe has said his family was not consulted about those plans. He has objected specifically to commercial elements — a restaurant, a gift shop — that he sees as disrespectful to his great-grandfather’s memory. He has described the site as having had periods of active disrespect: the bust above the grave was reportedly used as a target, and the location served as a party site for some years.
“The site has no significant connection to Sitting Bull and the culture he represented,” LaPointe said.
His vision for an appropriate resting place is somewhere connected to Sitting Bull’s life and his people — potentially the Black Hills, which his mother preferred, or the Little Bighorn Battlefield, which LaPointe has also mentioned. He wants a ceremony — a proper traditional Lakota ceremony — that Sitting Bull never received at his death and has not received since.