Ihanktonwan Nakota Oyate Field Trip

I was contacted by the Ihanktonwan Nakota Oyate and asked to secure the paperwork accumulated during their defense of their homelands against the state of South Dakota in the Supreme Court of the United States. Brian Molyneaux, Professor of Archaeology and Shesh Mathur, Graduate Assistant at the Institute of American Indian Studies, accompanied me on the mission. Brian and Shesh took along their cameras and furnished the pictures you find below.

It was a windy, chilly, gray, damp day that limited our efforts to secure photographs from the Ihanktonwan Oyate homelands. We entered the homelands on the lower road crossing Chouteau Creek, thence to Greenwood, north to the cemetery, and ending our journey at Marty, headquarters for the Ihanktonwan Nakota Oyate. After leaving tobacco and prayers at the cemetery entrance, we went in and made these photographs. The one of Leonard is actually taken at the Bon Homme County Cemetery.

Pananniapapi, or Strikes The Ree, was the itanchan (leader) of the Ihanktonwan Nakota when the Treaty of Washington, 1858, was signed. The Treaty created, in perpetuity, a 475,000 acre reservation on the north side of the Mnisose Wakpa (Missouri River), approximately 120 miles upriver from Sioux City, Iowa. The Ihanktonwan have been dispossessed of approximately 430,000 of those acres up to the present day. Grandpa was against the taking but when he passed on to the spirit world new leadership came into power and signed the Agreement with the Yankton Sioux or Dakota Indians, in South Dakota of 1892. This memorial to our perspicacious leader and relative is located in the Presbyterian cemetery located on the bluffs north of Greenwood Agency.

Leonard Bruguier, great, great, great grandson of Pananniapapi

A Field Trip to the Ihanktonwan Nakota Oyate Homelands, Friday, 13 February 1998, sponsored by the Institute of American Indian Studies, University of South Dakota

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2 February 2000, lrb