Sioux

The Sioux or Oceti Sakowin (/suː/ SOO; Dakota/Lakota: Očhéthi Šakówiŋ [oˈtʃʰeːtʰi ʃaˈkoːwĩ]) are groups of Native American tribes and First Nations people from the Great Plains of North America. The Sioux have two major linguistic divisions: the Dakota and Lakota peoples (translation: 'friend, ally' referring to the alliances between the bands). Collectively, they are the Očhéthi Šakówiŋ, or 'Seven Council Fires'. The term Sioux, an exonym from a French transcription (Nadouessioux) of the Ojibwe term Nadowessi, can refer to any ethnic group within the Great Sioux Nation or to any of the nation's many language dialects.

Before the 17th century, the Santee Dakota (Isáŋyathi: 'Knife', also known 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 18th century pushed the Dakota west into southern Minnesota, where the Western Dakota (Yankton, Yanktonai) and Lakota (Teton) lived. In the 19th century, the Dakota signed land cession treaties with the United States for much of their Minnesota lands. The United States' failure to make treaty payments or provide rations on time led to starvation and the Dakota War of 1862, which resulted in the Dakota's exile from Minnesota. They were forced onto reservations in Nebraska, North Dakota, and South Dakota, and some fled to Canada. After 1870, the Dakota people began to return to Minnesota, creating the present-day reservations in the state. The Yankton and Yanktonai Dakota (Iháŋktȟuŋwaŋ and Iháŋktȟuŋwaŋna; 'Village-at-the-end' and 'Little village-at-the-end'), collectively also called by the endonym Wičhíyena, lived near the Minnesota River before ceding their land and moving to South Dakota in 1858. Despite ceding their lands, their treaty with the US government allowed them to maintain their traditional role in the Očhéthi Šakówiŋ as the caretakers of the Pipestone Quarry, a cultural center for Sioux people. Considered the Western Dakota, they have in the past been erroneously classified as Nakota. Nakota are the Assiniboine and Stoney of Western Canada and Montana.

The Lakota, also called Teton (Thítȟuŋwaŋ; possibly 'dwellers on the prairie'), are the westernmost Sioux, known for their Plains Indians hunting and warrior culture. With the arrival of the horse in the 18th century, the Lakota became a powerful tribe on the Northern Plains by the 1850s. They fought the US Army in the Sioux Wars and defeated the 7th Cavalry Regiment at the Battle of Little Big Horn. The armed conflicts with the US ended with the Wounded Knee Massacre.

Throughout the 20th and 21st centuries, the Dakota and Lakota continued 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 the US government had illegally taken tribal lands covered by the Fort Laramie Treaty of 1868 and that 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 the Black Hills. Today, the Sioux maintain many separate tribal governments across several reservations and communities in North Dakota, South Dakota, Nebraska, Minnesota, and Montana in the United States and reserves in Manitoba and Saskatchewan in Canada.

The Sioux people refer to their whole nation of people (sometimes called the Great Sioux Nation) as the Očhéthi Šakówiŋ (meaning 'Seven Council Fires'). Each fire symbolizes an oyate (people or nation). Today the seven nations that comprise the Očhéthi Šakówiŋ are:

They are also referred to as the Lakota or Dakota based on dialect differences. In any of the dialects, Lakota or Dakota translates as 'friend, ally', referring to the alliances between the bands.

The name Sioux was adopted in English by the 1760s from French. It is abbreviated from the French Nadouessioux, first attested by Jean Nicolet in 1640. The name is sometimes said to be derived from Nadowessi (plural Nadowessiwag), an Ojibwe-language exonym for the Sioux meaning 'little snakes' or 'enemy' (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 alternative 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 style 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 formal Oglala Sioux Tribe or OST. The alternative English spelling of Ogallala is considered incorrect.