From: The Encyclopedia of Canada's Peoples/Aboriginals: Siouans/Mary C. Marino
The Siouan people in Minnesota in early contact times had a mixed economy, depending primarily upon hunting, fishing, and the harvesting of wild plants, with a limited amount of horticulture. Staple foods included bison, deer, wild rice, wild fruits, and starchy tubers, such as the prairie turnip. Sugar was obtained from the maple and the box elder by drawing and boiling the sap. Methods of food preservation included the drying of both meat and plant foods and the preparation of pemmican.
The Nakota, after their early separation from the Dakota and northward and westward movement, adopted a plains-oriented economy which centred around the bison. There was a major economic and technological adjustment in this change of lifestyle, chiefly in the hunting techniques and equipment that were specifically related to the animal species that the Nakota came to depend upon. On the other hand, techniques of food preservation and storage, and the recovery and use of primary industrial materials such as hide, bone, sinew, plant fibres, and the like, could be largely carried over from knowledge gained in other territories.
When the Dakota arrived in Canada they were close to starvation, having lost most of their possessions in their flight, and had to depend at first on supplies from the government and settlers at Fort Garry. Within a few years of their arrival, however, they had established a range of economic adaptations that varied according to the locales in which they settled. The Manitoba groups at Birdtail, Oak Lake, and Dakota Valley began gardening and stock raising, which continued to be supplemented by hunting, fishing, and the gathering of wild plants. Bands situated near towns and villages supplemented their farming and stock-raising livelihood with wages earned by hiring out their labour as domestic workers and farmhands. Their economic strategies were mostly quite successful; they were good farmers and highly valued workers. Farming operations on the reserves declined, however, as agriculture became more mechanized and farming began to require ever larger amounts of capital. The Dakota had no means of getting the required capital, and from the 1920s onward they fell behind neighbouring Euro-Canadian farmers in the success of their operations. Dakota in Saskatchewan and Manitoba are now exploring ways of making their reserves economically viable in non-agricultural modes.
Until the mid-1970s the majority of Siouan peoples resided on their reserves and either were employed there in farming and cattle-raising or worked seasonally off the reserves in a variety of short-term jobs. In the last twenty years the quest for education and better employment opportunities, as well as the amenities of urban life, have drawn people off the reserves in growing numbers. At present, many reside in the towns and major cities of the three provinces. Where the reserves are close to cities, many band members commute to school and work. Among women who are heads of families, a fairly common pattern is to leave children on the reserve with their grandparents or other kin while the mother pursues education or employment in the city, rejoining them during off-seasons and holidays.
As is true of most other native people in Canada, limited economic resources – coupled with the erosion of traditional culture – have led to a variety of social problems in Siouan communities, most notably high rates of suicide and substance abuse among youth and young adults. These are matters of great concern, but they are not the defining characteristics of Siouan life. Nor are such problems being met with apathy. All Siouan communities are currently striving to improve the social and economic circumstances of their people.
