Oglala Sioux Tribe

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The Oglala Sioux Tribe is a federally recognized indian tribe who are members of a major Sioux division known as the Western or Teton Sioux. The Lakota are the westernmost of the three Siouan language groups. The tribe prefers to be known as the Oglala Lakota Nation.

Official Tribal Name: Oglala Sioux Tribe

Address: PO Box 2070, Pine Ridge, South Dakota 57770
Phone: 605-867-5821
Fax: (605) 867-2609
Email:

Official Website: http://www.oglalalakotanation.org/oln/Home.html

Recognition Status: Federally Recognized

Traditional Name / Traditional Meaning:

Oglala Lakota Nation (in English)
Titunwan meaning “prairie dwellers” (Lakota in general)
Oglala meaning “They scatter their own” (band name or tiospaye in the Lakota language -it refers to when the original Olglala band members had a fight and threw out part of the band, who started a second Oglala band separate from this one and scattered to other areas)

Lakhota (Lakota)
is often reported as meaning “Ally or friend,” but this is incorrect. The real definition of Dakota/Nakota/Lakota is “those who consider themselves kindred.” Lakota” was first used in popular English literature sometime before 1874. See this detailed explanation of Sioux Names.

Common Name: Oglala Sioux or Oglala Lakota

Alternate names:

Formerly known as the Oglala Sioux Tribe of the Pine Ridge Reservation
Oglala Oyate, Pineridge Sioux, Lakota Sioux, Oglala Lakota Nation

Alternate spellings / Mispellings:

Ogalla, Ogallala, Ogalala

Name in other languages:

In Ojibwe, Sioux means “little snake or enemy.” A corruption of the Ojibwe word was used by the French before it was adopted by the US Government. Many Lakota people feel this is a derogatory term and prefer to be called by their band name or language affilitation.

Region: Great Plains

State(s) Today: Northern Nebraska, southern Minnesota, North Dakota, South Dakota and northeastern Montana. Also in Canada.

Traditional Territory:

Siouan language speakers may have originated in the lower Mississippi River region and then migrated to or originated in the Ohio Valley. They were agriculturalists and may have been part of the Mound Builder civilization during the 9th–12th centuries CE. In the late 16th and early 17th centuries, Dakota-Lakota-Nakota speakers lived in the upper Mississippi Region in present day Minnesota, Wisconsin, Iowa, and the Dakotas. Conflicts with Anishnaabe and Cree peoples pushed the Lakota west onto the Great Plains in the mid- to late-17th century.

Confederacy: Sioux Nation

Treaties:

Treaty With The Sioune And Oglala Tribes, 1825
Treaty With The Teton, Etc., Sioux, 1825 — Teton, Yancton and Yanctonies Bands
Treaty with the Sioux – Brule, Oglala, Miniconjou, Yanktonai, Hunkpapa, Blackfeet, Cuthead, Two Kettle, Sans Arcs, and Santee, and Arapaho, 1868. (Also known as the Fort Laramie Treaty of 1868).

Reservation: Pine Ridge Reservation

Allen, South Dakota, on the Pine Ridge Reservation, has the lowest per capita income in the US
Allen, SD on the Pine Ridge Reservation
Photo Credit:By Ss114 (Own work), CC BY-SA 3.0, via Wikimedia Commons

After being moved several times during the 1870s after the Great Sioux Reservation was broken up into five portions, the Red Cloud Agency was relocated in 1878 and renamed the Pine Ridge Reservation. By 1890, the reservation included 5,537 people, divided into a number of districts that include some 30 distinct communities.

The Rosebud Indian Reservation, to the east in South Dakota, also has residents who are enrolled Oglala Lakota members, but its population is composed primarily of Sicangu Oyate, or Brulé Sioux.

Pine Ridge Reservation, Shannon and Jackson County, SD 
Land Area:

Total Area: 2,000,000 acres
Tribal Owned: 706,340 acres
Allotted Owned: 1,064,840 acres
Total Tribal/Allotted Owned: 1,771,180 acres
Government Owned: 1,536 acres

Tribal Headquarters: Pine Ridge, South Dakota
Time Zone: Mountain

 

First used in 1961, this flag was approved by the Oglala Sioux Triba OST Council on March 9, 1962 as the official flag of the Oglala Sioux Tribe. The flag is comprised of eight white tipis, each of which represents one of the eight districts in which the seven tiyošpayes (from ti, ‘to dwell’ and ošpaye, ‘a band, a division of a tribe, and/or a community’) of the Oglala Lakota settled at Pine Ridge at the end of the ninteenth century. The tipis are arranged in a hocoka, ‘camp circle’ (the circle is a wakan, ‘sacred’, symbol representing continuity and unity) on a red background, a wakan, sacred, color, that also represents the blood shed by the Oglala people.

Population at Contact:

The total population of the Sioux (Lakota, Santee, Yankton, and Yanktonai) was estimated at 28,000 by French explorers in 1660. The Lakota population was first estimated at 8,500 in 1805. By 1830, the Oglala had around 3,000 members, growing steadily and reaching 16,110 in 1881.

Registered Population Today:

The total number of Lakota people combined has now increased to about 70,000, with about 40,000 of those enrolled in the Oglala Sioux Tribe. The Lakota people are one of the few tribes who had increased in numbers during the 19th century.

Tribal Enrollment Requirements:

Membership in the Oglala Sioux tribe is automatic if:
a)The person’s name appears on the official roll of the Oglala Sioux Tribe of the Pine Ridge Reservation as of April 1, 1935 or if the person’s name appears on any correction made within five years after the adoption of the Constitution on January 1936.

(b) A child is born to any member of the Oglala Sioux Tribe.

Genealogy Resources:

The Oglala Lakota Crazy Horse: A Preliminary Genealogical Study and an Annotated Listing of Primary Sources

Government:

Charter: The Tribal government operates under a constitution consistent with the Indian Reorganization Act of 1934. Constitution of the Oglala Sioux Tribe.
Name of Governing Body: Oglala Sioux Tribal Council
Number of Council members: 19 council memnbers, not counting executive officers
Dates of Constitutional amendments: December 24, 1969; December 3, 1985; July 11, 1997
Number of Executive Officers:
Tribal Council President, Vice-President, Secretary, Treasurer, and Fifth Member (the Fifth Member acts as a communicator between the Executive Tribal Council and the General Council)

Elections:

Elections are held every two years. Elections are not staggered, so all elections occur simultaneously.

Language Classification:

Siouan-Catawban ->Western Siouan -> Mississippi Valley Siouan -> Dakotan -> Dakota-Lakota

Language Dialects:

Lakota (English spelling) or Lakhotiya or Lakhota (Lakota spelling)

Number of fluent Speakers:

About 20,500 to 23,000 Lakota people are still fluent in their language, depending on who you talk to. Of those, about 12,666 fluent Lakota speakers reside on the Pineridge Reservation.

Lakota Dictionaries and Language Learning Tools:

Lakota to English, English to Lakota Dictionary Online
Lakota: A Language Course for Beginners
Lakota Dictionary Forum – Learn to read, write, and speak Lakota with others on the Internet.
New Lakota Dictionary, 2nd Edition – Used in many Lakota language revitalization curriculums.
Lakhotiya Woglaka Po! – Speak Lakota! Level 1 Audio CD – Narrated by trained Lakota educators, the CD provides exceptionally clear and appropriately-paced narration both from male and female speakers and among different age speakers. It is especially useful in areas of word pronunciation and phrase inflection.
You Tube – The best place to find free Lakota audio lessons so you can hear the language spoken. There are many Lakota language lessons by prominent Lakota language teachers there.
Lakota Fonts and Keyboards – Free from the Red Cloud Indian School
Reading and Writing the Lakota Language by Albert White Hat
Reading and Writing the Lakota Language Book on CD – I recommend the CD so you can hear the pronunciation. The book and CD together is even better.

Origins:

There are several theories concerning the origin of the Sioux Nation. Lakota creation stories trace the nation’s birth to the Black Hills of South Dakota. Tribal oral stories say the Lakota once lived within the earth, underground, and they emerged to the surface through Wind Cave in the Black Hills of South Dakota.

Historians say the Dakota, Lakota and Nakota migrated to the area from the woodlands of Minnesota.

Bands, Gens, and Clans:

Lakota is one of the three language divisions of the Great Sioux Tribe. The seven bands or “sub-tribes” of the Lakota are:

  • Sičháŋǧu (Brulé, Burned Thighs)
  • Oglála (“They Scatter Their Own”)
  • Itázipčho (Sans Arc, Without Bows)
  • Húŋkpapȟa (“End Village”, or Camps at the End of the Camp Circle)
  • Mnikȟówožu or Miniconjou (“Plant beside the Stream”,Planters by the Water)
  • Sihásapa (“Black Feet”)
  • Oóhenuŋpa (Two Kettles)

Related Tribes:

The Great Sioux Nation is actually made up of 18 separate tribes, or bands in the US, and 12 in Canada. These are divided into three language divisions: the Lakota Sioux, Dakota Sioux, and the Nakota Sioux. Each division speaks a different, but similar, Siouan language dialect. While the languages are slightly different dialects, this is not a political division, and the culture of all three groups is basically the same, except for language.There are also numerous subdivisions of the Sioux tribe, some included in the three main Siouan language division bands, and some recognized now as tribes separate from the Sioux Nation.

Related Groups who are now recognized as tribes separate from the Sioux:

Biloxi Indians
Cape Fear Indians
Cheraw Indians
Congaree Indians
Hidatsa Indians
Kansa Indians
Mahpekute Indians
Missouri Indians
Occaneechi Indians
Oohenonpa Indians
Sissipahaw Indians
Sugeree Indians
Waccamaw Indians
Wateree Indians
Waxhaw Indians
Woccon Indian

Traditional Allies:

Arapaho, Arikara and Cheyenne

Traditional Enemies:

Pawnee, Assiniboine, Chippewa, Cree, and Kiowa especially, and sometimes the Blackfoot and Crow

Ceremonies / Dances:

Ghost Dance – A central feature of the Ghost Dance Religion, introduced to the Oglalas in 1870 by way of the Cheyenne via the Paiutes. This religion taught that if they danced for five days and four nights in special ghost shiirts, their dead ancestors would comee back to life, the buffalo would return, and their world would be as it was before the White man came.

Sun Dance – The most important religious ceremony of the Sioux tribes. This sacred dance lasts four days and incorporates prayer, fasting, and piercing of the chest muscles and skin sacrifices, as an offering for the wellbeing of the tribe or a particular sick person.

Round Dance – A social dance performed for fun and to provide opportunities to meet members of the opposite sex.

Buffalo Ceremony – A puberty rite for young girls when they reach womanhood.

Modern Day Events & Tourism:

28th (as of 2013) Annual Oglala Nation Celebration – A 4 day intertribal pow wow open to the public. Usually held the first weekend in August each year.

Legends / Oral Stories:

Create your own reality
Lakota Star Knoledge
Legend of the Talking Feather
The End of the World according to Lakota legend
The Legend of Devil’s Tower
The White Buffalo Woman
Tunkasila, Grandfather Rock
Unktomi and the arrowheads

Art & Crafts:

The Oglala crafts women are known especially for their beautiful beadwork using thousands of tiny seed beads, and intricate porcupine quill work. The men are known for paintings on buffalo hides. Lakota artiists also make pottery, parfleche bags, and ceremonial peace pipes carved from catlinite. Other Lakota people feel that the peace pipe is too sacred of an object, and should never be sold for money.

Animals:

Around 1730, Cheyenne people introduced the Lakota to horses, called šuŋkawakaŋ (“dog [of] power/mystery/wonder”). Some historians say they got the horse from the Arikara ten years earlier, but after their adoption of horse culture, Lakota society changed from a semi-sedentary farming society to become nomadic hunter-gatherers whose main cycle followed the movement of the buffalo herds, and gave up farming.

Dogs (sunka, pronounced shoon-kah) were kept as pack animals, and puppies were also a food source.

Meanings attributed to animals by the Oglala Lakota
Hear aniamal names pronounced in Lakota

Clothing:

Lakota women wore long deerskin or elkskin dresses, often with fringes on the hems and bottom of sleeves to brush mosquitoes away as they walked. Lakota men wore breech cloths with leggings and buckskin shirts. Before Europeans came, they decorated their best clothing with intricate dyed porcupine quillwork. Later, beadwork using thousands of tiny seed beads became more common than quillwork. However, both are still practiced today.

The Lakota also wore moccasins on their feet and buffalo-hide robes in bad weather. Later, the Lakota adapted European clothing such as vests, cloth dresses, and blanket robes into their wardrobe. European hats were also popular items.

Adornment:

There were several Lakota hair styles, but the most common for both men and women was two braids divided on each side of the head. Both sexes wore their hair long except when they were in mourning. Men often wrapped their braids with fur or tied decorations such as shells or quilled strips on them. Both men and women wore shell earrings and shell, bone or claw necklaces.

Babies were carried by the women in cradleboards on their backs, and the cradleboard was often beaded and/or adorned with trinkets that had personal meanings. Frequently the baby’s umbilical cord was sewn into an amulet that was hung on the cradleboard. It was believed this would protect the baby from bad spirits.

Housing:

The tipi was the typical shelter structure once the Lakota became hunter-gatherers. It was made from tying long pine poles together at the top in a conical shape, and anchoring the poles in the ground with stakes. It was historically covered with buffalo hides sewn together, with a flap at the top for a smoke hole and a small entrance door, which was also covered with a flap made of tanned hides or a blanket. After the buffalo were killed off, the covering skin was replaced by canvas material.

Subsistance:

Before the Lakota migrated to the Great Plains, they were an agricultural community and grew crops such as tobacco, corn, beans, and squash. After they migrated to the plains, they became hunter-gatherers whose main food source was the plains bison, often referred to as buffalo. Deer, elk, bear, rabbit, raccoons, porcupine, groundhog, and other small animals and birds were also hunted. Young dogs were also eaten.

The Lakota dug camas roots, wild carrots, wild turnips, and wild onions, among other roots. Wild berries such as choke cherry, elderberry, bear berry, huckleberries, and blackberries were another food staple. Berries were mixed with animal fat and dried to make a food called pemicin, which is sort of like jerky, or they were used to thicken soups, or to make a pudding called wasna.

Economy Today:

Religion & Spiritual Beliefs:

The principle God, or higher power, is Wakan Tanka, the Great Spirit. (The literal translation of Wakan Tanka means “Great Mystery.”) However the Oglala believe everything has a part of this spirit, people, animals, trees and other plants, even rocks and water. Thus, spiritual power is all around you if you take the time to observe. The Oglala Sioux believe strongly in animal lore and the supernatural.

At birth one receives from Takuskanskan a guardian spirit and the life-breath or ghost which comes from the stars; at death these return to the spirit world.

Dreams and vision quests bring other spirit helpers, usually in the form of an animal, which help guide a person and protect them throughout their lives or just during a particular place in time. Each spirit helper has a different lesson or lessons to teach, and what is absorbed by each person is unique, even if two people have the same animal spirit helper.

Sioux legend says that with the creation of the universe a song was given to it, each part of the universe being imbued with a part of the song; but only in the Black Hills was the song found in its entirety, here at the “heart of everything that is.”

It was in the Black Hills that the Sioux people originated, and at Bear Butte on the eastern edge of the Hills, that the Creator first imparted his sacred instructions to them; thus it is said that Bear Butte is the most sacred of all places, and both Sioux and Cheyenne come here each year for vision quests. Although explanations of what happens to one at death vary, it has been said that the spirits of the Sioux dead rest in the Black Hills.

Tobacco, sweetgrass, sage, and cedar are sacred herbs. These are purifying herbs and used to attract good spirits or keep evil spirits and negative energy away from a person. Tobacco is smoked as a friendship gesture or while saying a blessing or praying to carry the prayers to the Gods. It is used as an offering for many things, such as when gathering plants or killing an animal or left at sacred places as an offering to the higher powers. Sweetgrass smells sweet and attracts good spirits and positive energy. The smell of sage is pungent and drives away evil spirits and repels negative energy. Cedar is used for puryifying.
The Sioux Drum

Funereal Customs:

At the time of death, the dead were wrapped in buffalo robes and placed on high scaffolds to aid their spiritual journey back to where life began. Their best possessions were placed with them for use in the happy hunting ground, and often a favorite horse was killed and placed at the base of the scaffold, so the person could ride it in the afterworld.

Loved ones often cut their hair short to express their grief when a loved one died, and women often slashed their arms and legs with many small cuts until they bled profusely, and sat alone on a hillside wailing loudly for several days.

The name of the deceased was not spoken directly after death, for fear it would cause their ghost to hang around and haunt them.

Wedding and Marriage Customs:

The woman owned the tipi and everything in it. To divorce, she simply threw the man’s weapons and clothing out of the tipi and they were considered divorced.
Sioux courtship and wedding customs

Tribal College: Oglala Lakota College
Radio: KILI Radio
Newspapers: Lakota Country Times and Native Sun News

Famous Oglala Quotes and Lakota Proverbs:

The Great Spirit is not perfect: it has a good side and a bad side. Sometimes the bad side gives us more knowledge than the good side. ~Lakota Proverb

They made us many promises, more than I can remember. But they kept but one – They promised to take our land…and they took it. ~ Chief Red Cloud

Guard your tongue in youth, and in age you may mature a thought that will be of service to your people.~Lakota Proverb

If the Great Spirit had desired me to be a white man he would have made me so in the first place. It is not necessary for eagles to be crows. ~Sitting Bull, Teton Lakota

The first peace, which is the most important, is that which comes within the souls of people when they realize their relationship, their oneness with the universe and all its powers, and when they realize that at the center of the universe dwells the Great Spirit, and that this center is really everywhere, it is within each of us. ~ Black Elk – Oglala Sioux

More famous Sioux Quotes

Famous Sioux Chiefs and Leaders:

Tȟašúŋke Witkó (Crazy Horse)(born about 1840 – September 5, 1877) One of the great Oglala war chiefs.

Maȟpíya Lúta (Red Cloud) (1822-December 10, 1909) – An Oglala chief, was a respected warrior and statesman. From 1866-1868, he successfully led the flight to close off the Bozeman Trail, which passed through prime buffalo hunting grounds. Once settled at Pine Ridge, Red Cloud worked to establish a Jesuit-run school for Indian children. He is buried on a hill overlooking the Red Cloud Indian School, which was named in his honor.

Heȟáka Sápa (Black Elk)

Siŋté Glešká (Spotted Tail, also known as Bigfoot) (1826 – December 29, 1890) – was a highly renowned chief of the Mniconjou Lakota.

Ste Si Tanka or Chetan Keah (Bigfoot – not the same as Spotted Tail above) – An elderly Oglala chief who was killed along with at least 150 others (some estimates say as high as 300) at the Massacre of Wounded Knee in 1890. A poignant photo was taken of his frozen body lying in the snow.

Young Man Afraid Of His Horses, (1830-1900) Commonly misinterpreted, his name actually means “They fear his horse” or “His horse is feared,” meaning that the bearer of the name was so feared in battle that even the sight of his horse would inspire fear.

Taopi Cikala (Little Wound) (born circa 1835 – winter 1899) – Oglala Lakota chief of the Kuinyan branch of the Kiyuksa band (Bear people or Eastern Oglala) after his brother died. The Bear people split from the Oglala band after his father, Old Bull Bear challenged his cousin, Chief Old Smoke to a fight. When he refused, Old Bull Bear killed Old Smoke’s favorite horse. Later, Red Cloud killed Old Bull Bear in retaliation for the act. In Lakota, Kiyuska means “cut off.”

Old Chief Smoke (Šóta)(1774-1864) an early Oglala chief and Shirt Wearer (a prestigious Lakota Warior Society).He and Old Bull Bear were involved in the incident that gave the Oglala’s their name (Those Who Scatter Their Own) in 1834.

Blue Horse (1822-July 16, 1908) was a Chief of the Wagluhe Band of Oglala Lakota,warrior, statesman and educator. Blue Horse is notable as one of the first Oglala Lakota U.S. Army Indian Scouts and as a signer of The Treaty of Fort Laramie in 1868.

Wašíčuŋ Tȟašúŋke or American Horse, the Younger (1840 – December 16, 1908) – was a chieftain of the Oglala Sioux during the Sioux Wars of the 1870s. He was also the nephew of the elder American Horse and son-in-law of Red Cloud. A more literal translation of his Lakota name (Wašíčuŋ Tȟašúŋke) is He-Has-A-White-Man’s-Horse.

  • American Horse (The Elder)
  • Crow Dog (Kangisanka)
  • Kicking Bear
  • Iron Tail
  • Flying Hawk
  • Big Mouth
  • Surrounded By the Enemy (1865-188?)
  • Red Shirt
  • Luther Standing Bear

Lakota Actors:

  • Moses Brings Plenty
  • Russell Means, actor, activist
    Russell Means, native american activist, dead at age 72

  • Amber Midthunder
  • David Midthunder
  • Chaske Spencer
  • Tokala Clifford
  • Michael Spears
  • Eddie Spears
  • Jim Warne
  • Larry Swalley
  • Jonothon Gill
  • Sonny Skyhawk
  • John Trudell
  • Kim Winona
  • Nathan Lee Chasing His Horse
  • Yvonne Russo

 

Athletes:

Billy Mays – An Oglala Lakota, was born on the Pine Ridge Indian Reservation. In 1964, he won the 10,000-meter race at the Olympic Games in Tokyo. He was the first American ever to win that race, and he did it in record time.

Artists:

Amos Bad Heart Bull, also known as Waŋblí Wapȟáha (Eagle Bonnet) (ca. 1868-1913), was a noted Oglala Lakota artist in what was called Ledger Art. It was a style that adapted traditional Native American pictography to the new European medium of paper, and named for the accountants’ ledger books, available from traders, used by the artists for their drawings and paintings. He was also the tribal historian of the Oglala, as his father Bad Heart Bull (Tȟatȟáŋka Čhaŋtéšiča) was before him.

Arthur Amiotte, (Oglala Lakota)-Painter, Sculptor, Author, Historian

Authors:

Ed McGaa (born Pine Ridge Indian Reservation) is a member of the Oglala Lakota, and an American author.

Arthur Amiotte – was born in 1942 in Pine Ridge, S.D. and is a descendant of the Minniconjou Sioux chief Standing Bear. He is an artist, author and educator. He was appointed to the Presidential Advisory Council for the Performing Arts at the Kennedy Center in Washington, D.C. by President Jimmy Carter, 1979-1981.

Moses Big Crow – writes of Lakota Sioux traditions and stories passed down from his ancestors of the Crazy Horse Clan.

Nicholas Black Elk, a member of the Oglala Sioux, was a religious elder who is perhaps best known now for his autobiography Black Elk Speaks, which was recorded by Nebraska poet John G. Neihardt and published in 1932. Born in Wyoming in 1863, he spent much of his life in South Dakota on the Pine Ridge Reservation (including during the Wounded Knee massacre there in 1890), although he also travelled in Buffalo Bill Cody’s Wild West Show from 1886-89.

Symbolism of Black Elk’s Vision

Tim Giago (Nanwica Kciji)was born in 1934 on the Pine Ridge Reservation, S.D. He went to San Jose Junior College and to the University of Nevada, Reno. Giago is a publisher and until 1998 was the owner of the Lakota Times newspaper.

Archie Fire Lame Deer , 1935- grew up on the Rosebud Reservation. The son and grandson of medicine men, Lame Deer left the reservation at the age of fourteen. He served in the Korean War and was a stuntman in Hollywood. Lame Deer is a lecturer on the Sioux religion and culture, travelling around the world teaching Native American spirituality.

John (Fire) Lame Deer , 1903-1976 (aka John Fire) was born on the Rosebud Reservation in South Daota.Lame Deer’s autobiography tells of his life as a rancher, rodeo rider, reservation police officer and holy man, including descriptions of the Sioux vision quest, sun dance and healing rituals.

Ed McGaa (Eagle Man) was born on the Pine Ridge reservation and has studied under Chief Eagle Feather and Chief Fool’s Crow, Sioux holy men. He is honored by the Sioux for having participated six times in the Sun Dance ceremony. He also served as a fighter pilot in the Marine Corps in Vietnam, flying 110 combat missions, receiving 8 air medals and 2 Crosses of Gallantry, and was recommended for a Distinguished Flying Cross. He has written several books on native American spirituality, a biography on Red Cloud and a book of Lakota oral history.

Luther Standing Bear (Ota Kte, Mochunozhin) , 1868-1939was born on the Pine Ridge Reservation in South Dakota. Standing Bear was raised as a traditional Sioux, growing up in Nebraska and South Dakota and was a hereditary chief of the Dakotas. He was one of the first students to attend the Carlisle Indian School in Pennsylvania. He held various jobs including teacher, minister and clerk. In 1898 he toured with the Buffalo Bill Wild West Show which lead him to California and the world of acting. In the 1920’s and 1930’s he fought to improve conditions for Indians on the reservations, writing several books about Indian life and government policy. Standing Bear was a member of the National League for Justice to the American Indian, Oglala Council, Actor’s Guild of Hollywood, and Indian Actor’s Association. Many of his quotes are now legendary.

Musicians / Drum Groups:

Porcupine Singers Drum Group
Scatter Their Own Indigenous Singers
Bryan Akipa, flutist (Sisseton-Wahpeton Oyate)

Other Famous Contemporary People:

Cecilia Fire Thunder (born Cecilia Apple; October 24, 1946) is a nurse, community health planner and tribal leader of the Oglala Sioux. On November 2, 2004, she was the first woman elected as president of the Tribe. She served until being impeached on June 29, 2006, several months short of the two-year term. The major controversy was over her effort to provide for women on the reservation needing family planning services after the South Dakota legislature banned most abortions throughout the state. The tribal council impeached her for proceeding without gaining their consensus.

A founder of community-based health clinics while living and working in California for two decades, Fire Thunder was among founders of the Oglala Lakota Women’s Society after her return to the reservation in 1986. She serves on the National Advisory Board of the National Organization on Fetal Alcohol Syndrome (NOFAS) and has worked at a shelter for domestic abuse. She is the coordinator of the Native Women’s Society of the Great Plains.

Theresa B. “Huck” Two Bulls (born 1956) is an attorney, prosecutor and politician in the United States and the Oglala Sioux Tribe. In 2004 she was elected as Democratic member of the South Dakota Senate, representing the 27th district, the first American Indian woman to be elected to the state legislature. She served until 2008. That year she was elected president of the Oglala Sioux Tribe of the Pine Ridge Reservation, the second woman to serve in this position, and had one two-year term.

Ola Mildred Rexroat, one of the first female pilots in the Women’s Airforce Service Pilots (WASP) during World War II.

Profiles of Sioux indian activists
Anna Mae Pictou Aquash, American Indian activist

Catastrophic Events:

Wounded Knee Massacre on December 29, 1890

Tribe History:

The real heroes of Wounded Knee
A true and honorable story from a Wounded Knee warrior
Traditional War Stories & Wounded Knee 1973
Wounded Knee warrior tells his story
Lakota voices in Stronghold camp defend Ghost Dancers
Descendants Remember Battle of Little Big Horn

In the News:

Easy to follow phonetic chart teaches Lakota language pronunciation
Tribal decendant wins fight to retrieve hair
Tusweca Tiospaye Announces Lakota Dakota Nakota Language Summit
New probate law will create new problems
6th annual Lakota Hemp Days Aug 21-23
New pemmican energy bar made by Oglala company going on the market
You can be a Modern Day Hero – Support Leonard Peltier’s Annual Christmas Drive
2008 Lakota Dakota Nakota Language Summit is a Huge Success
Arrest finally made in the death of Native American activist Anna Mae Pictou-Aquash

Further Reading:

Black Elk Speaks: Being the Life Story of a Holy Man of the Oglala Sioux
Crazy Horse: The Strange Man of the Oglalas
The Oglala People, 1841-1879: A Political History
Songs Of The Oglala Nation
Oglala Religion (Religion and Spirituality)
Oglala Women: Myth, Ritual, and Reality (Women in Culture and Society)
The Sun Dance And Other Ceremonies Of The Oglala Division Of The Teton Dakota