Lakota, Dakota & Nakota

The Očhéthi Šakówiŋ span the northern plains: Lakota in the west around the Black Hills, Dakota eastward into Minnesota, Nakota between, with reservations including Pine Ridge, Rosebud, Cheyenne River and Standing Rock, and communities north into Canada. Horse-mounted buffalo culture made them the emblematic plains power of the nineteenth century; that image has often hidden the living nations behind it.

The Black Hills, Paha Sapa, are the centre of the story. Guaranteed to the Great Sioux Nation by the Fort Laramie Treaty of 1868, they were seized after gold was found. In 1980 the United States Supreme Court ruled the taking unlawful and ordered compensation; the nations have refused the money ever since, now grown to well over a billion dollars, because the land itself is what was taken. Wounded Knee, where the army massacred hundreds in 1890, lies on Pine Ridge.

The present is organised and outward-facing: the Standing Rock movement against the Dakota Access Pipeline in 2016 became the largest Indigenous mobilisation in modern US history, and Lakota language immersion schools are rebuilding speech that boarding schools tried to end.

This is an introduction, the first layer. A full collection, like the Mapuche collection that opened this atlas, follows as research and review are completed for each people.