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.

Despite ceding their lands, their treaty with the U.S. 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.

[3] The traditional social structure of the Očhéthi Šakówiŋ strongly relied on kinship ties that extend beyond human interaction and includes the natural and supernatural worlds.

Early European explorers and missionaries who lived among the Dakota were sometimes adopted into the thiyóšpaye (known as "huŋka relatives"), such as Louis Hennepin who noted, "this help'd me to gain credit among these people".

[23] Each part of the čhaŋnúŋpa (stem, bowl, tobacco, breath, and smoke) is symbolic of the relationships of the natural world, the elements, humans and the spiritual beings that maintain the cycle of the universe.

[27] Historical leadership organization The thiyóšpaye of the Očhéthi Šakówiŋ assembled each summer to hold council, renew kinships, decide tribal matters, and participate in the Sun Dance.

Later visiting French traders and missionaries included Claude-Jean Allouez, Daniel Greysolon Duluth, and Pierre-Charles Le Sueur who wintered with Dakota bands in early 1700.

"[50] Despite ceding their lands, the treaty allowed the Western Dakota to maintain their traditional role in the Očhéthi Šakówiŋ as the caretakers of the Pipestone Quarry, which is the cultural center of the Sioux people.

[60] While the Dakota continued a subsistence cycle of corn, wild rice and hunting woodland animals, the Lakota increasing became reliant on bison for meat and its by-products (housing, clothing, tools) as they expanded their territory westward with the arrival of the horse.

These gatherings afforded leaders to meet to make political decisions, plan movements, arbitrate disputes, and organize and launch raiding expeditions or war parties.

At the same time, the Lakota branch 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.

[70] The situation escalated with the Grattan affair in 1854 when a detachment of U.S. soldiers illegally entered a Sioux encampment to arrest those accused of stealing a cow, and in the process sparked a battle in which Chief Conquering Bear was killed.

It established the Great Sioux Reservation including ownership of the Black Hills, and set aside additional lands as "unceded Indian territory" in areas of South Dakota, Wyoming, and Nebraska, and possibly Montana.

It stipulated that the government would abandon forts along the Bozeman Trail, and included a number of provisions designed to encourage a transition to farming, and move the tribes "closer to the white man's way of life."

"[79] According to one source, "animosities over the treaty arose almost immediately" when a group of Miniconjou were informed they were no longer welcome to trade at Fort Laramie, being south of their newly established territory.

[80] The government eventually broke the terms of the treaty following the Black Hills Gold Rush and an expedition into the area by George Armstrong Custer in 1874 and failed to prevent white settlers from moving onto tribal lands.

Gold had been discovered in the Black Hills and settlers began to encroach onto tribal lands, and the Sioux and Cheyenne refused to cede ownership to the United States.

[85] The fight was an overwhelming victory for the Lakota, Northern Cheyenne, and Arapaho, who were led by several major war leaders, including Crazy Horse and Chief Gall, and had been inspired by the visions of Sitting Bull.

[87] On December 29, 1890, five hundred troops of the 7th Cavalry Regiment, supported by four Hotchkiss guns (a lightweight artillery piece capable of rapid fire), surrounded an encampment of the Lakota bands of the Miniconjou and Hunkpapa[88] with orders to escort them to the railroad for transport to Omaha, Nebraska.

It remains unknown which side was responsible for the first shot; some of the soldiers are believed to have been the victims of "friendly fire" because the shooting took place at point-blank range in chaotic conditions.

The burial party found the deceased frozen; they were gathered up and placed in a mass grave on a hill overlooking the encampment from which some of the fire from the Hotchkiss guns originated.

[96] Besides the loss of land, the Dawes Act also "outlawed Native American culture and established a code of Indian offenses regulating individual behavior according to Euro-American norms of conduct."

Boarding schools were intended to "kill the Indian to save the man", which meant the destruction of Dakota and Lakota societies: children were taken away from their families, their traditional culture and kinship roles.

[99][97] The schools achieved mixed outcomes of traumatic experiences for many while others such as Charles Eastman, Ella Cara Deloria, Luther Standing Bear and Zitkala-Sa were able to use the education to their advantage to help their people.

The members of AIM were protesting what they said was the local corrupt government, along with federal issues affecting Indian reservation communities, as well as the lack of justice from border counties.

[111] After the Wounded Knee Incident in 1973, the International Indian Treaty Council was formed to support grassroots Indigenous struggles for human rights, self-determination and environmental justice through information dissemination, networking, coalition building, advocacy and technical assistance.

In 1978, the government tried to put an end to these boarding schools (and placement into foster families) with the Indian Child Welfare Act (ICWA), which says except in the rarest circumstances, Native American children must be placed with their relatives or tribes.

"[116] The new guidelines also not only prevent courts from taking children away based on socioeconomic status but give a strict definition of what is to be considered harmful living conditions.

[29] The Sioux maintain many separate tribal governments scattered across several reservations and communities in North America: in the Dakotas, Minnesota, Nebraska, and Montana in the United States; and in Manitoba, and southern Saskatchewan in Canada.

The Dakota and Lakota were forced to accept US-defined reservations in exchange for the rest of their lands and farming and ranching of domestic cattle, as opposed to a nomadic, hunting economy.