Identification

The Siouan First Nations in Canada – the Dakota, Nakota, and Lakota – belong to a large family of linguistically related tribal groups that historically occupied the central and northern plains region of North America. More distantly related tribes lived far to the south, near the lower reaches of the Mississippi River and in what is now the southeastern United States. The central and northern groups included the Mandan, Hidatsa, Crow, Chiwere, Dhegiha, Sioux (Dakota and Lakota), and Nakota (Assiniboine). The Nakota are known to have lived in what is now Canada since before the earliest European contact; they are now resident in Saskatchewan and Alberta. Lakota, followers of Chief Sitting Bull, have lived in Canada since the battle of the Little Big Horn (Montana) in 1876. The Dakota have lived continuously in Canada since the mid 1860s, but they occupied the region intermittently long before that. Other Siouan-speaking groups, such as the Hidatsa, may have done so too, but on this point we cannot be certain.

At the present time the Dakota reside on four reserves in Manitoba and three in Saskatchewan. The Manitoba reserves are Birdtail, Dakota Valley (formerly Oak River), Oak Lake, and Dakota Tipi (formerly Long Plain). The Saskatchewan reserves are Wahpeton, a few kilometres north of the city of Prince Albert, Moose Woods, about twenty-five kilometres south of Saskatoon, and Standing Buffalo, near Fort Qu’Appelle. A fourth reserve in extreme southwestern Saskatchewan, Wood Mountain, is occupied by Lakota.

The Nakota have several reserves in Saskatchewan and Alberta. Carry the Kettle is located about one hundred kilometres east of Regina near Sintaluta. Some Nakota live on White Bear Reserve, near Carlyle, about two hundred kilometres southeast of Regina. This community also includes a few Dakota as well as Cree and Saulteaux. A third group, the Mosquito band, live with Cree on a reserve south of Battleford.

In Alberta the largest Nakota reserve is at Morley, east of Cochrane and just to the north of the Trans-Canada Highway. There are also reserves at Eden Valley and Bighorn.

The traditional cultural and political divisions of the greater Siouan Nation were the oceti sakowin, the Seven Council Fires. The first four, Sisitonwan, Wahpetonwan, Mdewakantonwan, and Wahpekute, are known collectively as the Santee, who spoke Dakota. The fifth and sixth were the Ihanktonwan and Ihanktonwanna, who spoke Nakota. The seventh was the Titonwan, who spoke Lakota. This grouping, preserved through the oral traditions of the Siouan people, is highly suggestive of the chronology of the separation of the subgroups. The Titonwan, who moved westward onto the plains, subsequently grew in numbers and subdivisions and are now the most numerous dialectal subgroup; however, they started as but one of the original seven. The Assiniboine, whose language is also Nakota but is substantially different from the main group of dialects, may have separated before the oceti sakowin tradition crystallized in the form it has come down to us. Descendants of all of these groups are numbered among the Canadian Siouans today, with the majority, apart from the Assiniboine, being from the first four.