This article is part of In Session: The Teen Vogue Lesson Plan. Find the full lesson plan here.
Treaties are part of what the U.S. Constitution calls "the supreme law of the land." Yet they are too seldom discussed, too often ignored, and viewed by too many today as ancient history.
Nonetheless, treaties are legally binding agreements that occur nation to nation. Treaties were made between newly formed European settler governments and the sovereign Indigenous nations that already populated the continent.
Today, Natives are often thought of in terms of race, and we are considered people of color. But American Indians specifically are also designated by the federal government as a political classification. This is because we belong to ancient Indigenous tribes that predate the existence of the United States of America and we made treaties with them. These treaties recognized our sovereignty as independent nations.
Treaties, and the U.S. government’s history of unilaterally breaching them, have had a profound effect on Native people. To be blunt, we were lied to. Treaties were used as a ruse to coax tribes out of defending their territory and to steal Native lands and resources.
The U.S. made hundreds of treaties with Native nations. The list is exhaustive. I am Dakota and Lakota from the Oceti Sakowin (Great Sioux Nation), so I will focus on treaties that my people have signed with the government and how that has affected us.
Minnesota is the ancestral land of the Dakota. More than 1 in 10 treaties ever signed by the U.S. involved land in what is today Minnesota.
In the 1851 treaties of Traverse des Sioux and Mendota, Dakota of the Oceti Sakowin (Great Sioux Nation) ceded land in Minnesota to the U.S. in exchange for money, goods, and services. Unbeknownst to the Dakota, Congress eliminated Article 3 of each treaty. This Article set up reservation land within Minnesota for the Dakota to live on. The government also defaulted on payments to the Dakota. It kept more than 80% of the money. Of the payments that were made, the government often gave the money directly to traders who were supposed to supply the Dakota with rations. The withholding of rations by these traders led to the Dakota War of 1862, because the Dakota, of which there were an estimated 6,500 people, were starving. All told, the war lasted a month and a half. About 400 Dakota were arrested by the U.S. military. Ultimately, 38 Dakota men were hung in the largest mass execution in U.S. history, in Mankato, Minnesota, on December 26, 1862, under the orders of President Abraham Lincoln.
The Dakota people were separated after the war. We became exiles. The governor of Minnesota put a bounty on the scalps of every Dakota man, woman, and child. Some Dakota were taken to prison camps in Iowa. Others, like my ancestor Chief Wabasha, were marched to the Crow Creek Reservation in South Dakota. More were moved to Nebraska territory. Most Dakota from the Sisseton and Wahpeton bands were moved to the Lake Traverse Reservation in South Dakota. Some managed to escape to the Spirit Lake Reservation in North Dakota and to Canada. Others died from sickness and famine. More than one-quarter of Dakota in 1862 died during the following year.
In 1863, more than 150 Dakota were massacred at Whitestone Hill, where the cavalry took out their vengeance for the war on many innocent Dakota by ambushing them. Women and children were slaughtered there. They even killed the Dakota’s dogs and horses.
The Fort Laramie Treaty of 1851 "granted" the Lakota of the Oceti Sakowin (Great Sioux Nation) and their allies a large swath of territory in South Dakota, Wyoming, Nebraska, Montana, and North Dakota in exchange for the passage of roads and railways. Despite this, Lakota lands were encroached upon by outside invaders in breach of treaty law. The U.S. military launched the 1865 Powder River Expedition to subdue Natives within their own, established territory. The Lakota defended their lands. Oglala and Minniconjou Lakota warriors led by Red Cloud, Crazy Horse, and High-Back-Bone killed U.S. Captain W.J. Fetterman and all 80 of his men in half an hour, in what would become known as the Fetterman Fight.
Enter the Fort Laramie Treaty of 1868, which came about because of Red Cloud’s War. In short, the Lakota, led by the Crazy Horse, were kicking settler butt. In this treaty, the Lakota were promised half of South Dakota and part of North Dakota as a “Great Sioux Reservation.”
The Black Hills are the birthplace of the Lakota. Important ceremonies that bring harmony to the Universe have been held there for millennia. They are sacred to the Oceti Sakowin and are part of Lakota treaty lands, but they were taken from the Lakota when Congress reneged on the Fort Laramie Treaty during the gold rush that historians say began in 1874 — although rumors of gold in the Black Hills had lingered for years before then. In 1980, in United States v. Sioux Nation of Indians, the U.S. Supreme Court held that the seizure of the Black Hills from the Lakota was a wrongful taking and that the Sioux were entitled to "just compensation" under the 5th Amendment's "Takings Clause." The Lakota refuse to accept the money, because the Black Hills are not for sale. To this day, they rightfully belong to the Great Sioux Nation.
Lakota treaty land also includes the Standing Rock Sioux Reservation, where I was born and where water protectors camped out for nearly a year to prevent the construction of the Dakota Access pipeline through ancient Oceti Sakowin burial sites and under the freshwater source of millions of people downstream, both Native, and non-Native. February 23 marks the anniversary of the final raid of camps there. One of the last arrested was Regina Brave, a Lakota grandmother who was making a treaty stand. She is a veteran of the American Indian Movement's 1973 Occupation of Wounded Knee.
We are still fighting to protect our lands and waters. And we are on the right side of history. Honor the treaties. Join us.
Related: Colonialism, Explained
