The connection means, above all, the responsibility to ensure that Sitting Bull is treated with the respect he deserves — as a Lakota holy man, as a Sun Dancer, as a person whose body and belongings and genetic material should be handled with the dignity due a human being and a community leader, not as a museum piece or a tourist attraction.
“I just want to have him treated with respect,” LaPointe said.
That is a simpler statement than the full complexity of what he has done to make it real. Fourteen years of a scientist working on degraded DNA. Five years of Smithsonian research. Thirty-plus years of public advocacy. A lifetime of keeping the knowledge his mother gave him.
The lock of hair spent 117 years in a museum storage box. The family spent 117 years knowing who they were. The science eventually caught up with both.
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*Slug:* ernie-lapointe-sitting-bull-great-grandson-dna-hair-confirmed-2021
*Meta description:* A lock of Sitting Bull’s hair stored at the Smithsonian for 130 years yielded DNA that supported his great-grandson Ernie LaPointe’s lifelong family claim — but the family already had the proof.
*Category:* DNA / Family Identity Revelation
*Thumbnail hook:* A 5-centimeter lock of Sitting Bull’s hair spent 130 years in a Smithsonian box. The DNA inside it said something his great-grandson had always known.
*Tracking ID:* BM-CANDIDATE-061
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## A Note on Sources and Methodology
This article was researched using publicly accessible news reporting, institutional announcements, and archival journalism. The primary study — Moltke et al., *Science Advances*, October 27, 2021 (DOI: 10.1126/sciadv.abh2013) — was identified and its abstract and general conclusions accessed through multiple news sources and an institutional announcement from St. John’s College, University of Cambridge. The full paper’s methods section was not readable during the research period because the PMC full-text page returned a CAPTCHA block that prevented access.