The seven bands or "sub-tribes" of the Lakota are: Notable Lakota persons include Tȟatȟáŋka Íyotake (Sitting Bull) from the Húnkpapȟa, Maȟpíya Ičáȟtagya (Touch the Clouds) from the Miniconjou; Heȟáka Sápa (Black Elk), Maȟpíya Lúta (Red Cloud), and Tamakhóčhe Theȟíla (Billy Mills) - all Oglála; Tȟašúŋke Witkó (Crazy Horse) from the Oglála and Miniconjou, and Siŋté Glešká (Spotted Tail) from the Brulé.

Activists from the late 20th century to present include Russell Means (Oglála), and William Hawk Birdshead (Hunkpapa, Oglala, Cheyenne, and Arapaho) Early Lakota history is recorded in their winter counts (Lakota: waníyetu wówapi), pictorial calendars painted on hides, or later recorded on paper.

"[9] In the late 16th and early 17th centuries, Dakota-Lakota speakers lived in the upper Mississippi Region in territory now organized as the states of Minnesota, Wisconsin, Iowa, and the Dakotas.

[12] After 1720, the Lakota branch of the Seven Council Fires split into two major sects, the Saône, who moved to the Lake Traverse area on the South Dakota–North Dakota–Minnesota border, and the Oglála-Sičháŋǧu, who occupied the James River valley.

The large and powerful Arikara, Mandan, and Hidatsa villages had long prevented the Lakota from crossing the Missouri River.

In 1765, a Saône exploring and raiding party led by Chief Standing Bear discovered the Black Hills (the Paha Sapa), then the territory of the Cheyenne.

[15] In 1843, the southern Lakota attacked the village of Pawnee Chief Blue Coat near the Loup in Nebraska, killing many and burning half of the earth lodges.

[16] The next time the Lakota inflicted a blow so severe to the Pawnee would be in 1873, during the Massacre Canyon battle near Republican River.

[19] The Fort Laramie Treaty acknowledged Lakota sovereignty over the Great Plains in exchange for free passage for European Americans on the Oregon Trail for "as long as the river flows and the eagle flies".

[20] The U.S. government did not enforce the treaty restriction against unauthorized settlement, and Lakota and other bands attacked settlers and even emigrant trains as part of their resistance to this encroachment.

On September 3, 1855, 700 soldiers under U.S. Brevet Major General William S. Harney avenged the Grattan massacre by attacking a Lakota village in Nebraska, killing about 100 men, women, and children.

In 1868, the United States signed the Fort Laramie Treaty of 1868, exempting the Black Hills from all white settlement forever.

The Lakota attacks on settlers and miners were met by military force conducted by such army commanders as Lieutenant Colonel George Armstrong Custer.

General Philip Sheridan encouraged his troops to hunt and kill the buffalo as a means of "destroying the Indians' commissary.

Their combined forces, led by Chief Crazy Horse, killed 258 soldiers, wiping out the entire Custer battalion and inflicting more than 50% casualties on the regiment.

The reinforced U.S. Army defeated the Lakota bands in a series of battles, finally ending the Great Sioux War in 1877.

The Lakota were eventually confined to reservations, prevented from hunting buffalo beyond those territories, and forced to accept government food distribution.

During the Minnesota and Black Hills wars, their ancestors fled for refuge to "Grandmother's [i.e. Queen Victoria's] Land" (Canada).

Lakota elders joined the Unrepresented Nations and Peoples Organization (UNPO) to seek protection and recognition for their cultural and land rights.

Legally and by treaty classified as a "domestic dependent nation" within the United States,[24] the federally recognized Lakota tribes are represented locally by officials elected to councils for the several reservations and communities in the Dakotas, Minnesota, and Nebraska.

These tribes have government-to-government relationships with the United States federal government, primarily through the Bureau of Indian Affairs in the Department of Interior.

[30] The Lakota are among tribal nations that have taken actions, participated in occupations, and proposed independence movements, particularly since the era of rising activism since the mid to late 20th century.

They filed land claims against the federal government for what they defined as illegal taking of the Black Hills in the nineteenth century.

[40] It exposed what many critics consider to be the "kidnapping" of Lakota children from their homes by the state of South Dakota's Department of Social Services (D.S.S.).

The film features Genevieve Iron Lightning, a young Lakota dancer on the Cheyenne River Reservation, one of the poorest communities in the United States.

The early French historic documents did not distinguish a separate Teton division, instead grouping them with other "Sioux of the West", Santee and Yankton bands.