The Lakota Sioux Indians are one language branch of the Greater Sioux Nation, also known as the Teton Sioux (from Thítȟuŋwaŋ).
They speak Lakȟótiyapi—the Lakota language, the westernmost of three closely related languages that belong to the Siouan language family.
They are one of the three prominent subcultures of the Sioux people. Their current lands are in North Dakota and South Dakota.
The seven bands or “sub-tribes” of the Lakota are:
Last summer, in the countryside near Oglala, Leonard Little Finger held a lock of hair in his hands and knew the agony of Wounded Knee. He and six others had just returned from New England, where they had claimed a lock that reportedly had been cut from the scalp of his great-great-grandfather, Chief Big Foot, more than a century earlier at the Wounded Knee massacre. For decades, it had been part of a library collection in Barre, Mass. Now, as…
PINE RIDGE, S.D. – There is only the light of a quarter-moon and a canopy of shooting stars when Lakota voices in Stronghold camp say, “They are coming.” In the distance, fourteen Lakota horseback riders, some riding bareback, are approaching on the same route that survivors of the massacre of Wounded Knee followed 112 years ago. Here on Stronghold Table they Ghost Danced so the people would live and they were massacred. Now, the remains of men, women and children…