sioux tribe

Regaining The Mdewakantons Mille Lacs ancestral homeland

By Thomas Ivan Dahlheimer

On a Mille Lacs Kathio State Park interpretive sign, Leonard E. Wabasha is quoted as saying: "My people are the Mdewakanton Oyate. Mdewakanton means the People of Spirit Lake. Today that lake is known as Mille Lacs. This landscape is sacred to the Mdewakanton Oyate because one Otokaheys Woyakapi (creation story) says we were
created here. It is especially pleasing for me to come here and walk these trails, because about 1718 the first Chief Wapahasa was born here, at the headwaters of the Spirit River. I am the eighth in this line of hereditary chiefs." (reference 1.)

Read MoreRegaining The Mdewakantons Mille Lacs ancestral homeland

Symbolism of Black Elk’s Vision

At the age of nine, Nicholas Black Elk, a holy man of the Oglala Sioux, had a great vision. This vision was the primary subject of his interview with writer John Neihardt and Neihardt's subsequent 1932 novel, Black Elk Speaks. As the title suggests, Neihardt's novel is the medium through which Black Elk shares his life narrative. Through the novel, in addition to the recounting of his great vision and other significant events in his personal history, Black Elk voices significant events and figures in Sioux history. 

Read MoreSymbolism of Black Elk’s Vision

Indians come forward with tales of physical and sexual abuse at missionary boarding schools

AUTHOR: Sharon Waxman

ROSEBUD RESERVATION -The day the Rev. Kenneth Walleman came to the front door, Lloyd "Sonny" One Star went to get his gun.

"I couldn't keep my composure. I kept shaking," One Star, 46, a leader of the Sioux tribe on this reservation, said. "I was going to kill him."

Walleman was a former administrator at St. Francis Mission, the Jesuit boarding school One Star had attended through his youth, a priest, One Star says now, who sexually abused him for years.

Read MoreIndians come forward with tales of physical and sexual abuse at missionary boarding schools