Bdewankantonwan Dakota Nation

The Bdewankantonwan (Mdewakanton) Dakota are a Santee Dakota people whose homeland lies in the Minnesota River valley and the woodlands of the upper Midwest. They lived by hunting, fishing, wild rice harvesting and small-scale farming, and their society was organized into bands and villages. Treaties in the nineteenth century ceded much of their land, and the U.S.–Dakota War of 1862 led to the imprisonment and exile of many Dakota, including the mass hanging at Mankato. Survivors and their descendants rebuilt communities, and in 1934 the Flandreau Santee Sioux Tribe was federally recognized under the Indian Reorganization Act, with its reservation in Moody County, South Dakota. The Bdewankantonwan Dakota continue to maintain their language, ceremonies and kinship ties. The name Bdewankantonwan refers to the Mdewakanton band, one of the four eastern Dakota groups; today the Flandreau community remains a center of Dakota language and cultural revival, and its government provides health, education and housing services.