Lakota

The Lakota, the westernmost of the three closely related Sioux divisions alongside the Dakota and Nakota, are a Plains Indigenous people whose traditional territory centered on the northern Great Plains of what is now North and South Dakota, Nebraska and Wyoming. Historically dependent on bison hunting from horseback after acquiring horses in the eighteenth century, the Lakota organized into seven allied bands within the wider Oceti Sakowin Sioux alliance, and fought a series of wars against the United States, including the 1876 Battle of the Little Bighorn, before the 1890 Wounded Knee Massacre effectively ended large-scale Lakota armed resistance. Lakota spiritual practices, including the Sun Dance and the vision quest, and figures such as Sitting Bull and Crazy Horse, remain widely recognized symbols of Plains Indigenous culture, and Lakota communities today live chiefly on reservations including Pine Ridge and Standing Rock.