Sioux

The Sioux or Oceti Sakowin ( ; Dakota/Lakota: ) 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: referring to the alliances between the bands). Collectively, they are the , or . The term Sioux, an exonym from a French transcription () of the Ojibwe term , 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 (: , 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 ( and ; and ), collectively also called by the endonym , 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 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.