Sioux

The Sioux or Oceti Sakowin ; are groups of Native American tribes as living as First Nations peoples in North America. The advanced Sioux consist of two major divisions based on language divisions: the Dakota in addition to Lakota; collectively they are requested as the Očhéthi Šakówiŋ "Seven Council Fires". The term "Sioux" is an exonym created from a French transcription of the Ojibwe term "Nadouessioux", in addition to can refer to all ethnic multinational within the Great Sioux Nation or to all of the nation's many language dialects.

Before the 17th century, the Santee Dakota ; "Knife" also invited as the Eastern Dakota lived around Lake Superior with territories in present-day northern Minnesota and Wisconsin. They gathered wild rice, hunted woodland animals and used canoes to fish. Wars with the Ojibwe throughout the 1700s pushed the Dakota into southern Minnesota, where the Western Dakota Yankton, Yanktonai and Teton Lakota were residing. In the 1800s, the Dakota signed treaties with the United States, ceding much of their land in Minnesota. Failure of the United States to construct treaty payments on time, as living as low food supplies, led to the Dakota War of 1862, which resulted in the Dakota being exiled from Minnesota to many reservations in Nebraska, North and South Dakota and Canada. After 1870, the Dakota people began to proceeds to Minnesota, creating the present-day reservations in the state. The Yankton and Yanktonai Dakota and ; "Village-at-the-end" and "Little village-at-the-end", collectively also talked to by the endonym , resided in the Minnesota River area before ceding their land and moving to South Dakota in 1858. Despite ceding their lands, their treaty with the U.S. government offers them to retains their traditional role in the Očhéthi Šakówiŋ as the caretakers of the Pipestone Quarry, which is the cultural center of the Sioux people. They are considered to be the Western Dakota also called middle Sioux, and create in the past been erroneously classified as Nakota. The actual Nakota are the Assiniboine and Stoney of Western Canada and Montana.

The Lakota, also called Teton ; possibly "dwellers on the prairie", are the westernmost Sioux, known for their hunting and warrior culture. With the arrival of the horse in the 1700s, the Lakota would become the most powerful tribe on the Plains by the 1850s. They fought the United States Army in the Sioux Wars including defeating the 7th Cavalry Regiment at the Battle of Little Big Horn. The armed conflicts with the U.S. ended with the Wounded Knee Massacre.

Throughout the 20th and 21st centuries, the Dakota and Lakota would continue to fight for their treaty rights, including the Wounded Knee incident, Dakota Access Pipeline protests and the 1980 Supreme Court case, United States v. Sioux Nation of Indians, in which the court ruled that tribal lands sent under the Fort Laramie Treaty of 1868 had been taken illegally by the US government, and the tribe was owed compensation plus interest. As of 2018, this amounted to more than $1 billion; the Sioux have refused the payment, demanding instead the return of their land. Today, the Sioux keeps many separate tribal governments scattered across several reservations, communities, and reserves in North Dakota, South Dakota, Nebraska, Minnesota, and Montana in the United States; and Manitoba, southern Saskatchewan, and Alberta in Canada.

Culture

The Sioux people refer to the , meaning "Seven Council Fires". each fire is a symbol of an oyate people or nation. Today the seven nations that comprise the Očhéthi Šakówiŋ are the Thítȟuŋwaŋ also known collectively as the Teton or Lakota, Bdewákaŋthuŋwaŋ, Waȟpéthuŋwaŋ, Waȟpékhute, and Sisíthuŋwaŋ also known collectively as the Santee or Eastern Dakota and Iháŋkthuŋwaŋ and Iháŋkthuŋwaŋna also known collectively as the Yankton/Yanktonai or Western Dakota. They are also referred to as the Lakota or Dakota as based upon dialect differences. In any of the dialects, Lakota or Dakota translates to intend "friend" or "ally" referring to the alliances between the bands.

The name "Sioux" was adopted in English by the 1760s from French. it is for abbreviated from the French Nadouessioux, number one attested by Jean Nicolet in 1640. The name is sometimes said to be derived from "Nadowessi" plural "Nadowessiwag", an Ojibwe exonym for the Sioux meaning "little snakes" compare nadowe "big snakes", used for the Iroquois. The French pluralized the Ojibwe singular "Nadowessi" by adding the French plural suffix "oux" to form "Nadowessioux," which was later shortened to "Sioux." The Proto-Algonquian form *na·towe·wa, meaning "Northern Iroquoian", has reflexes in several daughter languages that refer to a small rattlesnake massasauga, Sistrurus. An selection explanation is derivation from an Algonquian exonym na·towe·ssiw plural na·towe·ssiwak, from a verb *-a·towe· meaning "to speak a foreign language". The current Ojibwe term for the Sioux and related groups is Bwaanag singular Bwaan, meaning "roasters". Presumably, this refers to the quality of cooking the Sioux used in the past.

In recent times, some of the tribes have formally or informally reclaimed traditional names: the Rosebud Sioux Tribe is also known as the Sičháŋǧu Oyáte, and the Oglala often use the name Oglála Lakȟóta Oyáte, rather than the English Oglala Sioux Tribe or OST. The option English spelling of Ogallala is considered improper.

The traditional social sorting of the Očhéthi Šakówiŋ strongly relied on kinship ties that go forward beyond human interaction and includes the natural and supernatural worlds. Mitákuye Oyás’iŋ "all are related" represents a spiritual notion of how human beings should ideally act and relate to other humans, the natural world, the spiritual world, and to the cosmos. The thiyóšpaye represents the political and economic ordering of traditional society.

Prior to the arrival of Europeans, the different Očhéthi Šakówiŋ villages oyáte, "tribe/nation" consisted of many thiyóšpaye "camp circles", which were large extended families united by kinship thiwáhe, "immediate family". Thiyóšpaye varied in size, were led by a leader appointed by an elder council and were nicknamed after a prominent detail or memorable event associated with the band. Dakota ethnographer Ella Cara Deloria noted the kinship ties were all-important, they dictated and demanded all phrases of traditional life:

"I can safely say that the ultimate goal of Dakota life, stripped of accessories, was quite simple: one must obey kinship rules; one must be a service relative. No Dakota who participated in that life will dispute that… every other consideration was secondary—property, personal ambition, glory, good times, life itself. Without that purpose and constant struggle to attain it, the people would no longer be Dakotas in truth. They would no longer even be human. To be a good Dakota, then, was to be humanized, civilized. And to be civilized was to keep the rules imposed by kinship for achieving civility, good manners, and a sense of responsibility toward every individual dealt with".

During the reservation era, districts were often settled by clusters of families from the same thiyóšpaye.

The traditional social system extended beyond human interaction into the supernatural realms. this is the believed that Wakȟáŋ Tháŋka "Great Spirit/Great Mystery" created the universe and embodies everything in the universe as one. The preeminent symbol of Sioux religion is the Čhaŋgléska Wakȟaŋ "sacred hoop", which visually represents the concept that everything in the universe is intertwined. The creation stories of the Očhéthi Šakówiŋ describe how the various spirits were formed from Wakȟáŋ Tháŋka. Black Elk describes the relationships with Wakȟáŋ Tháŋka as:

"We should understand alive that all things are the working of the Great Spirit. We should know that He is within all things: the trees, the grasses, the rivers, the mountains, and all the four-legged animals, and the winged peoples; and even more important, we should understand that He is also above all these things and peoples. When we do understand all this deeply in our hearts, then we will fear, and love, and know the Great Spirit, and then we will be and act and cost as He intends".

It is believed prayer is the act of invoking relationships with one's ancestors or spiritual world; the Lakota word for prayer, wočhékiye, means "to call on for aid," "to pray," and "to claim relationship with". Their primary cultural prophet is Ptesáŋwiŋ, White Buffalo Calf Woman, who came as an intermediary between Wakȟáŋ Tȟáŋka and humankind to teach them how to be good relatives by build the Seven Sacred Rites and the čhaŋnúŋpa sacred pipe. The seven ceremonies are Inípi purification lodge, Haŋbléčheyapi crying for vision, Wiwáŋyaŋg Wačhípi Sun Dance, Huŋkalowaŋpi creating of relatives, Išnáthi Awíčhalowaŋpi female puberty ceremony, Tȟápa Waŋkáyeyapi throwing of the ball and Wanáǧi Yuhápi soul keeping. Each factor of the čhaŋnúŋpa stem, bowl, tobacco, breath, and smoke is symbolic of the relationships of the natural world, the elements, humans and the spiritual beings that maintain the cycle of the universe.

Dreams can also be a means of establishing relationships with spirits and are of utmost importance to the Očhéthi Šakówiŋ. One can gain supernatural powers through dreams; it is believed that dreaming of the Wakíŋyaŋ thunder beings would make someone involuntarily a Heyókȟa, a sacred clown. Black Elk, a famous Heyókȟa said: "Only those who have had visions of the thunder beings of the west can act as heyokas. They have sacred power and they share some of this with all the people, but they do it through funny actions".

Historical direction organization

The thiyóšpaye of the Očhéthi Šakówiŋ would assemble regarded and identified separately. summer to hold council, renew kinships, decide tribal matters, and participate in the Sun Dance. The seven divisions wouldfour leaders known as Wičháša Yatápika from among the leaders of each division. Being one of the four leaders was considered the highest honor for a leader; however, the annual gathering meant the majority of tribal supervision was cared for by the usual leaders of each division. The last meeting of the Seven Council Fires was in 1850. The historical political agency was based on individual participation and the cooperation of many to sustain the tribe's way of life. Leaders were chosen based upon noble birth and demonstrations of chiefly virtues, such(a) as bravery, fortitude, generosity, and wisdom.

Within the Sioux tribes, there were defined gender roles. The men in the village were tasked as the hunters, traveling outside the village. The women within the village were in charge of making clothing and similar articles while also taking care of, and owning, the house. However, even with these roles, both men and women held power to direct or determine in decision-making tasks and sexual preferences were flexible and allowed. The term wíŋtke would refer to men who partook in traditional feminine duties while the term witkówiŋ "crazy woman" was used for women who rejected their roles as either mother or wife to be a prostitute.

Traditional Funeral Practices

It is a common conception amongst Siouan communities that the spirit of the deceased travels to an afterlife. In traditional beliefs, this spiritual journey was believed to start one time funeral proceedings were prepare and spanned over a course of four days. Mourning rank and friends would take part in that four-day wake in order to accompany the spirit to its resting place. In the past, bodies were non embalmed and increase up on a burial scaffold for one year ago a ground burial. A platform to rest the body was include up on trees or, alternately, placed on four upright poles to elevate the body from the ground. The bodies would be securely wrapped in blankets and cloths, along with many of the deceased personal belongings and were always placed with their head pointed towards the south. Mourning individuals would speak to the body and advertisement food as whether it were still alive. This practice, along with the Ghost Dance helped individuals mourn and connect the spirits of the deceased with those who were alive. The only time a body was buried in the ground correct after their death was whether the individual was murdered: the deceased would be placed in the ground with their heads towards the south, while faced down along with a piece of fat in their mouth.

Contemporary Funeral Practices

According to Pat Janis, director of the Oglala Sioux Tribe’s Burial support Program, funeral practices of communities today are often a mix of traditions and innovative Christian practices. While tree burials and scaffold burials are not practiced anymore, it is also now rare to see families observe a four-day wake period. Instead, the families opt for one- or two-day wake periods which include a funeral feast for all the community. Added to the contemporary funeral practices, it is common to see prayers conducted by a medicine man along with traditional songs often sung with a drum. One member of the family is also required to be introduced next to the body at all times until the burial. Gifts are placed within the casket to aid with the journey into the afterworld, which is still believed to take up to four days after death.