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The Lakota (IPA: [laˈkˣota]) (also Teton, Tetonwan) are a Native American tribe. They are part of a confederation of seven related Sioux tribes (the Oceti Sakowin or seven council fires) and speak Lakota, one of the three major dialects of the Sioux language.

The Lakota are the westernmost of the three Sioux groups, occupying lands in both North and South Dakota. The seven branches or "sub-tribes" of the Lakota are Sicangu, Oglala, Izipaco, Hunkpapa, Miniconjou, Sihasapa, and Ooinunpa.

History

The Lakota are closely related to the western Dakota and Nakota of Minnesota. After their adoption of the horse, šųká-wakhą́ () ('dog power/mystery/wonder') in the early 18th century, the Lakota became part of the Great Plains culture with their eventual Algonquin-speaking allies, the Tsitsistas (Northern Cheyenne), living in the northern Great Plains. Their society centered on the buffalo hunt with the horse. There were 20,000 Lakota in the mid-18th century. The number has now increased to about 70,000, of whom about 20,500 speak the Lakota language.

After 1720, the Lakota branch of the Seven Council Fires split into two elements, the Saone who moved to the Lake Traverse area on the South Dakota-North Dakota-Minnesota border, and the Oglala-Sicangu who occupied the James River Valley. By about 1750, however, the Saone had moved to the east bank of the Missouri, followed 10 years later by the Oglala and Brulé (Sičangu).

The large and powerful Arikara, Mandan, and Hidatsa villages had prevented the Lakota from crossing the Missouri for an extended period, but when smallpox and other diseases nearly destroyed these tribes, the way was open for the first Lakota to cross the Missouri into the drier, short-grass prairies of the High Plains. These Saone, well-mounted and increasingly confident, spread out quickly. In 1765, a Saone exploring and raiding party led by Chief Standing Bear discovered the Black Hills (which they called the Paha Sapa). Just a decade later, in 1775, the Oglala and Brulé also crossed the river, following the great smallpox epidemic of 1772–1780, which destroyed three-quarters of the Missouri Valley populations. In 1776, they defeated the Cheyenne as the Cheyenne had earlier defeated the Kiowa, and gained control of the land which became the center of the Lakota universe.

Initial contacts between the Lakota and the United States, during the Lewis and Clark Expedition of 1804–06 was marked by a standoff involving the Lakota refusing to allow the explorers to continue upstream countered by the Expedition preparing to battle. Formally, the Fort Laramie Treaty of 1851 acknowledged native soverignty over the Great Plains in exchange for free passage along the Oregon Trail, for "as long as the river flows and the eagle flies". In Nebraska on September 3, 1855, 700 soldiers under American General William S. Harney avenged the "Grattan Massacre" by attacking a Lakota village, killing 100 men, women, and children. Other wars followed; and in 1862–1864, as refugees from the "Dakota War of 1862" in Minnesota fled west to their allies in Montana and Dakota Territory, the war followed them.

Because the Black Hills are sacred to the Lakota, they objected to mining in the area, which had been attempted since the early years of the 19th century. In 1868, the US government signed the Fort Laramie Treaty, exempting the Black Hills from all white settlement forever. 'Forever' lasted only four years, as gold was publicly discovered there, and an influx of prospectors descended upon the area, abetted by army commanders like Lt. Colonel George Armstrong Custer. The latter tried to administer a lesson of noninterference with white policies, resulting in the Black Hills War of 1876–77. Hunting and massacre of the buffalo were urged by General Philip Sheridan as a means to "destroying the Indians' commissary".

The Lakota with their allies, the Arapaho and the Northern Cheyenne, defeated General George Crook's army at the Battle of the Rosebud and a week later defeated the U.S. 7th Cavalry in 1876 at the Battle at the Greasy Grass or Little Big Horn, killing 258 soldiers and inflicting more than 50% casualties on the regiment. But like the Zulu triumph over the British at Isandlwana in Africa three years later, it proved to be a pyrrhic victory. The Teton were defeated in a series of subsequent battles by the reinforced U.S. Army, and were herded back onto reservations, prevented from hunting buffalo and forced to accept government food distribution, which went to 'friendlies' only.

The Lakota were compelled to sign a treaty in 1877 ceding the Black Hills to the United States, but a low-intensity war continued, culminating, fourteen years later, in the killing of Sitting Bull (December 15, 1890) at Standing Rock and the Massacre of Wounded Knee (December 29, 1890) at Pine Ridge.

Today, the Lakota are found mostly in the five reservations of western South Dakota: Rosebud Indian Reservation (home of the Upper Sičangu or Brulé), Pine Ridge Indian Reservation (home of the Oglala), Lower Brule Indian Reservation (home of the Lower Sičangu), Cheyenne River Indian Reservation (home of several other of the seven Lakota bands, including the Sihasapa and Hunkpapa), and Standing Rock Indian Reservation, also home to people from many bands. But Lakota are also found far to the north in the Fort Peck Reservation of Montana, the Fort Berthold Reservation of northwestern North Dakota, and several small reserves in Saskatchewan and Manitoba, where their ancestors fled to "Grandmother's Land" (Canada) during the Minnesota or Black Hills War.

Large numbers of Lakota also live in Rapid City and other towns in the Black Hills, and in Metro Denver. Lakota elders joined the Unrepresented Nations and Peoples Organisation (UNPO) seeking protection and recognition for their cultural and land rights.

The Lakota name now joins Sioux, Kiowa, Apache, Dakota, Cherokee and other American Indian names that have been given to aircraft. The UH-145 has been selected as the United States Army's new Light Utility Helicopter, and has been named the Lakota.

Government

Legally and by treaty a semi-autonomous "nation" within the United States, the Lakota Sioux are represented by elected officials comprising many separate local tribal governments scattered across the several reservations and communities in the Dakotas, Minnesota, Nebraska, and also in Manitoba and southern Saskatchewan in Canada. The current President of the Oglala Sioux, the majority tribe of the Lakota, is John Yellowbird Steele. He was elected in 2007.

Independence movement

Beginning in 1974, some Lakota activists have taken steps to become independent from the United States, an attempt to form their own nation. These steps have included drafting their own "declaration of continuing independence" and using Constitutional and International Law to solidify their legal standing.

On December 202007, Indian activists announced the withdrawal of their group of Lakota Sioux from all treaties with the United States government. Longtime political activist Russell Means lead a delegation that declared the Lakota a sovereign nation with property rights over thousands of square miles in South Dakota, North Dakota, Nebraska, Wyoming and Montana. The group stated that they do not act for elected tribal governments, "IRA Indians, 'stay by the fort indians', or other Lakota people unwilling to be free," describing such Lakota people as Nazi "collaborators, the Vichy Indians and those tribal governments set up by the United States of America,"

Ethnonyms

The name Lakota comes from the Lakota autonym, lakóta "feeling affection, friendly, united, allied". The early French literature does not distinguish a separate Teton division, instead lumping them into a "Sioux of the West" group with other Santee and Yankton bands.

The names Teton and Tetuwan comes from the Lakota name títųwą (the meaning of which is obscure). This term was used to refer to the Lakota by non-Lakota Sioux groups. Other derivations include: Ti tanka, Tintonyanyan, Titon, Tintonha, Thintohas, Tinthenha, Tinton, Thuntotas, Tintones, Tintoner, Tintinhos, Ten-ton-ha, Thinthonha, Tinthonha, Tentouha, Tintonwans, Tindaw, Tinthow, Atintons, Anthontans, Atentons, Atintans, Atrutons, Titoba, Tetongues, Teton Sioux, Teeton, Ti toan, Teetwawn, Teetwans, Ti-t’-wawn, Ti-twans, Tit’wan, Tetans, Tieton, Teetonwan, etc.

As noted above, the early French sources call the Lakota Sioux with an additional modifier, such as Scioux of the West, West Schious, Sioux des prairies, Sioux occidentaux, Sioux of the Meadows, Nadooessis of the Plains, Prairie Indians, Sioux of the Plain, Maskoutens-Nadouessians, Mascouteins Nadouessi, and Sioux nomades.

Today many of the tribes continue to officially call themselves Sioux which the Federal Government of the United States applied to all Dakota/Lakota/Nakota people in the 19th and 20th centuries. However, some of the tribes have formally or informally adopted traditional names: the Rosebud Sioux Tribe is also known as the Sičangu Oyate (Brulé Nation), and the Oglala often use the name Oglala Lakota Oyate, rather than the English "Oglala Sioux Tribe" or OST. (The alternate English spelling of Ogallala is deprecated, even though it is closer to the correct pronunciation.) The Lakota have names for their own subdivisions.

Notable persons include Sitting Bull (Tatanka Iyotaka) from the Hunkpapa band and Crazy Horse (Tašunke Witko), Red Cloud (Maĥpiya Luta), Black Elk (Hehaka Sapa), Medicine Man and Sundance Chief Pete Catches (Petaga Yuha Mani), and Billy Mills from the Oglala band. The Lakota also are Western of the three Sioux groups, occupying lands in both North and South Dakota.

Reservations

Today, one half of all Enrolled Sioux live off the Reservation.

Lakota reservations recognized by the US government include:

• Oglala Oglala (Pine Ridge Indian Reservation)
• Sicangu (Rosebud Indian Reservation)
• Hunkpapa (Standing Rock Reservation)
• Mniconjou (Cheyenne River Sioux Reservation)
• Izipaco (Cheyenne River Sioux Reservation)
• Siha Sapa (Cheyenne River Sioux Reservation)
• Ooinunpa (Cheyenne River Sioux Reservation)

Some Lakota also live on other Sioux reservations in eastern South Dakota, Minnesota, and Nebraska:

• Santee, in Nebraska
• Crow Creek in Central South Dakota
• Yankton in Central South Dakota
• Flandreau in Eastern South Dakota
• Sisseton-Wahpehton in Northeastern South Dakota and Southeastern North Dakota
• Lower Sioux in Minnesota
• Upper Sioux in Minnesota
• Shakopee in Minnesota
• Prairie Island in Minnesota

In addition several Lakota live on Wood Mountain Indian Reserve often Wood Mountain First Nation northwest of Wood Mountain Post now a Saskatchewan historic site.

See also

• Lakota language
• Lakota mythology

Bibliography

• Christafferson, Dennis M. (2001). Sioux, 1930-2000. In R. J. DeMallie (Ed.), Handbook of North American Indians: Plains (Vol. 13, Part 2, pp. 821-839). W. C. Sturtevant (Gen. Ed.). Washington, D.C.: Smithsonian Institution. ISBN 0-16-050400-7.
• DeMallie, Raymond J. (2001a). Sioux until 1850. In R. J. DeMallie (Ed.), Handbook of North American Indians: Plains (Vol. 13, Part 2, pp. 718-760). W. C. Sturtevant (Gen. Ed.). Washington, D.C.: Smithsonian Institution. ISBN 0-16-050400-7.
• DeMallie, Raymond J. (2001b). Teton. In R. J. DeMallie (Ed.), Handbook of North American Indians: Plains (Vol. 13, Part 2, pp. 794-820). W. C. Sturtevant (Gen. Ed.). Washington, D.C.: Smithsonian Institution. ISBN 0-16-050400-7.
• Hein, David (Advent 2002). "Episcopalianism among the Lakota / Dakota Indians of South Dakota." The Historiographer, vol. 40, pp. 14-16.
• Hein, David (1997). "Christianity and Traditional Lakota / Dakota Spirituality: A Jamesian Interpretation." The McNeese Review, vol. 35, pp. 128-38.
• Matson, William and Frethem, Mark (2006). Producers. "The Authorized Biography of Crazy Horse and His Family Part One: Creation, Spirituality, and the Family Tree". The Crazy Horse family tells their oral history and with explanations of Lakota spirituality and culture on DVD. (Publisher is Reelcontact.com)
• Parks, Douglas R.; & Rankin, Robert L. (2001). The Siouan languages. In R. J. DeMallie (Ed.), Handbook of North American Indians: Plains (Vol. 13, Part 1, pp. 94-114). W. C. Sturtevant (Gen. Ed.). Washington, D.C.: Smithsonian Institution. ISBN 0-16-050400 5.

References

1. Winona LaDuke, All Our Relations: Native Struggles for Land and Life, (Cambridge, MA: South End Press, 1999), 141.
2. http://www.infca.org/tribes/IRA.htm
3. http://www.indianz.com/News/2004/005762.asp
4. Descendants of Sitting Bull, Crazy Horse break away from US, Agence France-Presse news
5. Bill Harlan, Lakota group secedes from U.S., Rapid City Journal, December 202007.
6. http://www.argusleader.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20071220/NEWS/712200347/1001 Lakota group pushes for new nation], Argus Leader Washington Bureau, December 202007.
7. http://lakotafreedom.com/history.html
8. http://www.argusleader.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20071220/NEWS/712200347/1001 Lakota group pushes for new nation], Argus Leader Washington Bureau, December 202007.

External links

• Dakota Blues: The History of The Great Sioux Nation
• Lakhota.Com The Leading Lakota Sioux Resource teaching Language and History since 1995 - run by members of the Cheyenne River Sioux Tribe
• Lakota Freedom Delegation
• Lakota declaration of independence and related documents
• Lakota Freedom Delegation to Withdraw from Treaties in DC 2007/12/14
• The Teton Sioux (Edward S. Curtis)
• Lakota Language Consortium (Indiana)
• Lakota Winter Counts a Smithsonian exhibit of the annual icon chosen to represent the major event of the past year

• Lakota tribe
• Sioux Wars