The Great Sioux Nation is the traditional political structure of the Sioux in North America. The peoples who speak the Sioux language are considered to be members of the Oceti Sakowin or Seven Council Fires. The seven member communities are sometimes grouped into three regional/dialect sub-groups, but these mid-level identities are not politically institutionalized. The seven communities are all individually members of the historic confederacy. In contemporary culture, the designation is primarily a linguistic, cultural, and for some, political grouping. Since 2019, "the language of the Great Sioux Nation, three dialects, Dakota, Lakota, and Nakota" is an official language of South Dakota.
Subdivisions
The Great Sioux Nation is divided into three linguistically and regionally based groups and several subgroups. Linguistically, all three language groups belong to the Sioux language.
The term "Great Sioux Nation" is also sometimes applied to the region of the western and midwestern United States which, while not a legal designation, includes the following recognized Indian reservations:
This region also includes the defunct Great Sioux reservation, which was divided into smaller portions in the 19th century, and other "unceded Indian territory" in four states, as well as parts of the following states:
In one of the oldest, unresolved cases in U.S. legal history, United States v. Sioux Nation of Indians 448 U.S. 371, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that the United States was wrong in breaking the terms of the Fort Laramie Treaty of 1868, which forever exempted the Black Hills from all-white settlement. When European Americans discovered gold there in 1874, miners swept into the area in a gold rush. The U.S. government reassigned the Lakota, against their wishes, to other reservations in western South Dakota, breaking up the Great Sioux Reservation into smaller portions. The Supreme Court awarded eight Sioux tribes $106 million in compensation—the 1877 value of $17.5 million, plus interest. The Sioux Nation has refused to accept the award, saying they want their land returned. The money is held in accounts at the Treasury Department, accruing interest. As of 2011, the accounts are estimated to be valued at over $1 billion.
Canada
The Assiniboine, who live to the North of most of the Sioux peoples, speak a Siouan language closely related to the Sioux language but are not considered part of the modern Oceti Sakowin. The Assiniboine were the first of the Siouan-speaking peoples to leave the Eastern Woodlands and move onto the Great Plains. They had developed as a separate people sometime before 1640, when they were first documented as a tribe by French missionaries. Because of this, other Sioux-speakers referred to them as the Hohe, or "rebels". The Canadian Nakoda possibly began as the westernmost band of the Assiniboine, but were referred to as a separate people after about 1744. Later, in the nineteenth century, further bands belonging to the Dakota peoples and to a lesser extent to the Lakotas, also moved to Canada and their descendants still live in several of the Canadian First Nations.
