Lakota people

The Lakota (Lakota: Lakȟóta or Lakhóta, pronounced) are a Native American people. Also known as the Teton Sioux (from Thítȟuŋwaŋ), they are one of the three prominent subcultures of the Sioux people, with the Eastern Dakota (Santee) and Western Dakota (Wičhíyena). Their current lands are in North and South Dakota. They speak Lakȟótiyapi—the Lakota language, the westernmost of three closely related languages that belong to the Siouan language family.

Originally based around the western Great Lakes, the Lakota were pushed onto the northern Great Plains during the seventeenth century by conflicts with the Anishinaabe and Cree; after adopting horse culture around 1730, they crossed the Missouri River and established themselves in the Black Hills by the 1770s as the spiritual center of their territory. The 1851 Fort Laramie Treaty recognized Lakota sovereignty over much of the central Plains in exchange for passage along the Oregon Trail; the 1868 treaty, concluding Red Cloud's War, closed the Black Hills to white settlement "for as long as the river flows and the eagle flies," a guarantee the 1874 discovery of gold there rendered meaningless within two years. The resulting Great Sioux War culminated in the destruction of Custer's column at the Battle of the Little Bighorn in 1876, but a reinforced army ended Lakota resistance by 1877, confining the bands to reservations under a Black Hills cession treaty whose legitimacy remains disputed. Conflict flared a final time in 1890, when the killing of Sitting Bull at Standing Rock was followed two weeks later by the Wounded Knee Massacre, in which the 7th Cavalry killed more than 250 Lakota men, women, and children—an event that has endured as a defining symbol of U.S. policy toward Native nations.

Today the Lakota live primarily on five reservations in South Dakota—Pine Ridge, Rosebud, Lower Brule, Cheyenne River, and Standing Rock—with further communities in North Dakota, Nebraska, Montana, and the Canadian provinces of Manitoba and Saskatchewan, the latter descended from bands that fled north during the Minnesota and Black Hills wars. Each reservation is governed by an elected tribal council as a "domestic dependent nation" of the federal government. In 1980 the U.S. Supreme Court awarded the Sioux nations $122 million for the Black Hills taking in United States v. Sioux Nation of Indians, a settlement the tribes have refused on the grounds that acceptance would extinguish their claim to the land, leaving the award to accrue interest in a federal account now worth over $1 billion. A 2007 declaration of independence by a faction associated with Russell Means was repudiated by the tribes' elected governments.

The seven bands or "sub-tribes" of the Lakota are:

Sičháŋǧu (Brulé, Burned Thighs)
Oglála ("They Scatter Their Own")
Itázipčho (Sans Arc, Without Bows)
Húŋkpapȟa (Hunkpapa, "Camps at the End of the Camp Circle")
Mnikȟówožu (Miniconjou, "Planters by the Water")
Sihásapa ("Blackfeet" or "Blackfoot")
Oóhenuŋpa (Two Kettles)

Notable Lakota figures include Tȟatȟáŋka Íyotake (Sitting Bull) and Tȟašúŋke Witkó (Crazy Horse), leaders during the Plains wars; Maȟpíya Lúta (Red Cloud) and Siŋté Glešká (Spotted Tail), prominent in treaty diplomacy; Heȟáka Sápa (Black Elk); and, among more recent activists, Russell Means (Oglála).