Ernie LaPointe Reveals Sitting Bull Lineage, Guards 150-Year Legacy

Q: Sitting Bull's heir kept his lineage secret for decades. What forgotten battle truths is he now revealing to the world?

Ernie LaPointe is helping restore an Indigenous account of the Battle of the Little Bighorn that challenges the old “Custer’s Last Stand” narrative. Through family oral history and public commemoration, he says the battle is better understood as the Battle of the Greasy Grass: a Native victory fought to defend homelands, families and treaty rights. The central truth he is emphasizing is context. The clash in June 1876 did not happen in isolation; it grew out of U.S. violations of the 1868 Fort Laramie Treaty after gold was found in the sacred Black Hills. In LaPointe’s telling, Sitting Bull and the allied Lakota, Northern Cheyenne and Arapaho were resisting the seizure of their land and forced confinement, not seeking war for its own sake. LaPointe also highlights Sitting Bull’s role as a spiritual and political leader, not just a legendary figure frozen in myth. Indigenous oral histories describe him as a protector who foresaw the conflict and stood for sovereignty. That perspective shifts the story away from Custer-centered heroics and toward Native strategy, survival and leadership. Another truth LaPointe is pressing is that the battle’s meaning did not end in 1876. For descendants, it remains tied to an unfinished struggle over sacred land, broken promises and cultural survival. The 150th anniversary events at Little Bighorn are therefore not only about remembrance, but about reclaiming a history long told without Native voices at the center.

1 articles · Updated · The New York Times · Jun 21

Ernie LaPointe, 77, says he hid for years that he was Sitting Bull’s great-grandson before publicly revealing his lineage in the early 1990s.
That disclosure followed childhood warnings from his mother that being known as a descendant of the Hunkpapa Lakota leader would deny him a normal life in South Dakota.
LaPointe now casts himself as a protector of Sitting Bull’s legacy, tied to the Lakota leader’s resistance to the U.S. seizure of the Great Plains.
At Little Bighorn, the story frames the battle’s 150-year legacy as still personal for descendants of both Sitting Bull and Gen. George A. Custer.