![]() "These people are just a pain in the place you sit - and will probably doubt these findings, also," he added. "People have been questioning our relationship to our ancestor as long as I can remember." "I feel this DNA research is another way of identifying my lineal relationship to my great-grandfather," said LaPointe, who had previously used death certificates and a family tree to prove his relationship to Sitting Bull. Native American Tribe Reclaims Ancestral Land Stolen 250 Years Ago: 'The Highest Honor' LePointe, of South Dakota, told Reuters that the findings from the study will help him silence those who had doubted his claims as a descendant of Sitting Bull. It took 14 years for scientists - led by Eske Willerslev, director of the Lundbeck Foundation GeoGenetics Centre at the University of Cambridge - to develop a way to extract useable DNA from the piece of hair. Scientists were able to analyze a piece that had been saved for study. The museum then gave the items to LaPointe and his three sisters in 2007, at which point a part of the hair lock was burned in a ceremony. RELATED: Chief of Cherokee Nation Calls on Jeep to Stop Using Tribe's Name: 'It Does Not Honor Us' The hair, along with cloth leggings, were then loaned to the Smithsonian Institution in 1896. The lock of hair that was examined was taken "without any permission or authority whatsoever" by a post surgeon at Fort Yates before Sitting Bull's burial, the researchers said. "Hence, this study opens the possibility for broadening genealogical research, even when only minor amounts of ancient genetic material are accessible." "To our knowledge, this is the first published example of a familial relationship between contemporary and a historical individual that has been confirmed using such limited amounts of ancient DNA across such distant relatives," the researchers said in a statement. ![]()
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