I recently went to visit a reservation in Cherokee...North Carolina....this was a beautiful place seated in the Smokey mountains...this tribe was living very comfortably and still holding on very tightly to their ancestors traditions while maintaining a balance with the modern day culture of everyday life in America...it was a fabulous insight to the living conditions and traditions of a tribe who did not roam the land but stayed and hunted in one location, building lodges and roots of their forefathers who owed the land before it was cruelly taken away....I loved it..I'm Irish, I practice shamanism and these people knew what spirituality was about....

LAKOTA

The Oglala Lakota are a proud and strong people with vitality, hopefulness, and a tight grasp on their culture and traditions, in spite of a history of persecution and adversity by the U.S. They are a people of honor and perseverance holding on to their beliefs and hopes of a better life. They have contributed greatly to the history of this nation and deserve a hell of a lot better from the people who have tried, and failed, to break them.
One of the earliest inhabitants of the plains and hills of South Dakota were the members of the Sioux Nation. Eventually, the Nation split into three main divisions based upon the dialect of their language that they spoke. The easternmost group, the Santee Sioux, spoke the D, or Dakota, dialect. The Yankton Sioux spoke the N, or Nankota, dialect, and the Teton, in the west, spoke the L, or Lakota, dialect.


Within the Sioux Nation, the Tetons were the most powerful and numerous of the three divisions. However, the Tetons themselves consisted of seven divisions, or bands. These bands were the Oglala, Sihasipa (Blackfeet), Sicangu (Brule), Hunkpapa, Minneconjou, Itazipco (Sans Arc), and the Oohenumpa (Two Kettle). Since first meeting the Lewis and Clark Expedition in 1803, the Sioux have played a prominent part in the history of the northern plains and the state of South Dakota. Today, the descendants of the earlier Sioux nations can still be found on many of the reservations in South Dakota.


The Lakota are mostly known as the "Sioux," which is the French take-off from "nadouessioux," a Chippewa word meaning little snakes or enemy. The Sioux call themselves "Lakota or Dakota" which means friend or ally.


The Lakota's were a peaceful people, as was all the plains people; until 1861, when the white settlers started moving in. These settlers slaughtered the buffalo, which the plains people depended on for their livelihood, taking the hides and leaving the carcasses to rot where they had fallen. This is what led to the first outbreaks of violence between the two peoples. Corrupt Indian agents, prospectors seeking valuable minerals in tribal lands, and the building of the railroads, which interfered with the tribes' hunting practices caused the conflicts to continue. Between 1869 and 1878, over 200 battles were fought; the Native Americans fought courageously, but the constant flow of settlers and the progression of the railroad made the resistance hopeless.


The Oglala Lakota Tribe is part of the Great Sioux Nation, who's boundaries, in accordance with the Fort Laramie treaty of 1851 extended from the Big Horn Mountains in the west to eastern Wisconsin and from Canada in the north to the Republican River in Kansas in the south, but in the 1868 Fort Laramie Treaty, it was reduced from the Big Horn Mountains in the west to the east side of the Missouri River, and from the Heart River in North Dakota in the north to the Platte River in Nebraska to the south. Located in the center of the Great Sioux Nation is the black hills, sacred to the Lakota. In 1874, General George Armstrong Custer and the 7th Calvary violated the treaty of 1868 by entering the Black Hills and discovering gold. This started a gold rush, which began the conflict between the U.S. and the Great Sioux Nation. The U.S. wanted to buy or rent the Black Hills from the Lakota people, but they refused. Custer was requested to bring the Sioux bands in and put them on reservations; but the Sioux and their allies, the Cheyenne and Arapaho, defeated them at the Little Bighorn in 1876.


After their victory, the Great Sioux Nation scattered. The U.S. demanded that the Lakotas turn themselves in to the reservations; finally, after starving and freezing, they surrendered. The government insisted on buying the Black hills, but the Sioux still refused, so the U.S. introduced the "sell or starve bill" in 1877. The Sioux would rather starve than sell their sacred land; so congress took the land illegally. In 1888 the

I feel sorry for the modern tribes; it must be awful living on those reservations. They should return to their traditional way of life, hunting the buffalo and living in tipis, I understand it is very hard to go back to that way of life, I blame the American government entirely, but something needs be done to help the Native Americans.