Native Americans
Dakota and Lakota people
The word 'Dakota' is derived from the seven council fires (Oceti Sakowin) - or in other words, the main political units for the people of Dakota. The word means "ally" also referred to as "Sioux" at times. Historically, the Sisseton, Wahpekute, Wahpeton, and Mdewakanton constituted of western Yankton and Yanktonai who were together referred to as Nakota and the Teton and Eastern Dakota. The Santee Dakota family had their land in the western and central parts of what later came to be Minnesota, during the early 1800s. In the same period, the western Dakota people were living mainly in what is presently known as South and North Dakota (Nabokov, 2010).
The Lakota and the Dakota prophesized and envisioned the ghost dance which began in their minds. As a vision, the leader of the dance passed away before enacting the vision. People believed that this was a special dance sent by God to share the message of peace. The Lakota and the Dakota had much belief in the dance as a source of peace and unification among the tribes. This dance had a primary theme of becoming friendly to the whites and spreading their message across the Lakota and the Dakota people. The people learnt to dance the ghost dance. Both men and women dragged their feet side-by-side singing religious songs around a fire (Nabokov, 2010).
The Lakota and the Dakota people clung onto the ghost dance believing it was their last source of hope for revival. This was at a crucial time, when the ruling government required these people to shift to reservations. Through the ghost dance, this population combined their religious beliefs, moral ideas, and rituals into one ceremony. Through this dance, they believed in family reunion and resurrection of people who died. Their leaders created attires for this dance to protect the Lakota and the Dakota from the bullets of the white man. They viewed this dance as the better religion ever had. In this context, these people knew this religion would unite them with their white neighbors and prepare the tribes for their final Christianization. They bragged about this dance as a strategy to assimilate themselves in the culture of the white while at the same time preserving their native values (Brown, 2006).
Evidently, Lakota and the Dakota people did not live in one village as they moved and changed their work in accordance with the seasons. During the winters, they spent their lives near the stores of supplies that they constructed the year before. The work of women was making clothes, processing hides and collecting wood while the duties of men were fishing and hunting. During the spring season, the villages separated, and men had to leave their hunting parties as women and children resorted to cultivation of crops such as beans, squash, and corn. The families changed to gathering wild rice from the riverbanks after finishing the harvest of this corn. During the autumn season, families moved to their chosen hunting ground for the year for an annual hunting. This traditional culture of communal livelihood was the foundation of Dakota culture and society that changed immediately after the contact they had made with the Europeans in the mid-1960 (Sutton, 2009).
According to tradition, the divinity of Dakota people was passed through oral tradition. Eastman Charles (Ohiyesa) who was a Santee Dakota wrote that the spirituality of the Dakota was surrounded by the oneness and the unity of the world; everything in the world had been modeled from the single universal force that was known as 'Wakan' (the Great Mystery). Later on, the missionaries persuaded the Dakota to leave their traditional beliefs and follow Christianity, as it was the only true way of life. According to history, the day-to-day life of the Dakota people was on survival basis. The Dakota people pooled their forces on collective activities such as provision of communal defense, processing animal skin for shelter and clothing, cultivation of crops, hunting, and gathering. This was very significant because the conflicts were bound to occur with other communities, unsubstantiated food sources and the harsh climate. Kinships formation occurred through close bonds between the communities. It was maintained through the exchange of gifts, which included tools, food, clothing, and other useful items (Nabokov, 2010).
These customs and lifestyles continued until the time when gold was discovered in California in 1849. The United States government regarded the west as a permanent Indian frontier a land inhospitable with limited or no economic value. During the early,...
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