CAMBRIDGE, ENGLAND—According to a statement released by the University of Cambridge, a new technique for analyzing familial relationships through DNA has been developed by Eske Willerslev of the University of Cambridge and the Lundbeck Foundation GeoGenetics Center. Ernie Lapointe and his sisters trace their ancestry on their mother’s side to Tatanka-Iyotanka, who is also known as Sitting Bull, a Hunkpapa Lakota leader remembered for his role in the Battle of the Little Bighorn in 1876. Sitting Bull was killed by Indian Police on December 15, 1890. The paper trail of family relationships includes birth and death certificates, a family tree, and other historic records. Willerslev contacted Lapointe when he learned that a sample of Sitting Bull’s hair, held in the Smithsonian Museum for more than 100 years, had been handed over to the family in 2007. Willerslev and his team were eventually able to extract degraded fragments of autosomal DNA, which contains genetic material from both mother and father, from the hair sample. They then compared the results to autosomal DNA samples from Ernie Lapointe and other Lakota Sioux. Willerslev said that the study confirms Ernie Lapointe is Sitting Bull’s great-grandson. With this new information, Lapointe hopes to identify Sitting Bull’s remains, reportedly buried in two different places, and move them to a culturally significant location. Read the original scholarly article about this research in Science Advances. To read about an 1872 standoff between the Modoc tribe and the U.S. Army, go to "Letter from California: Inside a Native Stronghold."
