Wicozani Wakan Ota Akupi (Bringing Back Many Sacred Healings)

The years between 1849 and 1890 were the darkest for the three divisions of the Lakota, Dakota, and Nakota tribal nations.¹ We suffered through these years as white European people began moving through our lands, across the plains, over the mountains, and to the western seaboard. We suffered before and after this time, but never so harshly and inhumanely as we did between 1849 and 1890. A secret order of extermination for our leaders and warriors existed at all times. This order would later be put in place against our old people, women, children, animals, and anything that moved in our camps. This order was authorized by different U.S. government and military leaders who were experts in corruption and cruelty.

When we look at the treaties that were made between our people and the U.S. government, we see our ancestors who were forced into believing that we would be given help and protection if we gave up our resistance in defense of our lands and accepted the reservation system. Some of our reservations were created on lands where we chose them to be, in our spiritual places of refuge, but others were created on lands around military forts or on lands not suitable for making a living.

Our Dakota and Nakota relatives in Mini Sota (one translation being Smokey Water because of the huge amounts of fog on the lakes and rivers in present-day Minnesota) were the first of our three dialectical tribal divisions to feel the viciousness of the white people and their encroachment on our lands. The Dakota and Nakota nations lived in many dozens of traditional camps west of present-day Minneapolis, Minnesota, all the way to Mini Sose Wakpala (The River That Runs Fast, or the Missouri River) in present-day South Dakota.

The Lakota nation was next in line for the same experience of anguish and hatred. We received the same treatment: extensions of friendliness, sporadic intrusions onto our lands, threats of war, engagement in treaty making, then actual war against our people, massacres of our people, and political assassination of our leaders. Then we were left alone to live with the echoes of genocide. We were forced to watch our people die at the hands of the soldiers who outnumbered us and used a powerful arsenal of advanced weaponry.

All of the lands west of the Missouri River, south into what is now Nebraska, all around Paha Sapa (Black Hills, named because as one approaches the area, the hills appear to be black), and far into what is now North Dakota, were occupied by the Lakota Nation. Our three divisions occupied our lands because it was intended to be that way from our Creator, who is named Ate Wakan Tanka (Sacred Father Who Encompasses All).

A majority of us were killed without mercy, some of us fled and became members of other tribal bands within our territories, and some of us fled in all directions and settled where we could. Many of us accepted the notion of peace and became dependent on the U.S. government for our general needs. Many of us were captured, forced to walk in long, agonizing death marches, and put in military stockades where we were kept under threat of violence.

Our alliances with other tribes and our refuge with them played one of the major roles in our survival. The tribes in the high plains of present-day Canada and the tribes west of the Black Hills took us in and gave us protection until we were strong enough to make our way back to our homelands. On our return we found our camps completely destroyed and our people nowhere around. We were strangers in our own lands.

All of the Lakota, Dakota, and Nakota tribal prisoners incarcerated in the state and federal prisons in the Northern Plains are asked to remember the 1,700 Dakota...