Minnesota

UPPER SIOUX DAKOTA RESERVATION

Federally recognized
Yellow Medicine County, Minnesota
P.O. Box 147
Granite Falls, MN 56241

(612) 564-2360, has to be wrong, this is a Minneapolis number

Total area: 912 acres
Tribally owned: 912 acres
Non-Indian: 10 acres

Total labor force: 6; something wrong here
Highschool or higher graduate: 26.7%
Reservation population: 200
Total enrollment: 350
Total unemployment: 27.3%
Per capita income: $6,207



Firefly Creek Casino just a listing how to get there and facilities from a casino travel page

Upper Sioux State Park

Treaty Site History Center St Peter not much good, not even pix. Try to get copy of the traverse des Sioux treaty in toto.

Mazonmani (Iron Walker) and his wife Hazawin (Blueberry woman) had a daughter, Mazaokiyewin (Woman who Talks to Iron). Later named Isabel Roberts , she was exiled from Minnesota with all the Dakota people after the unsuccessful Dakota rebellion of 1862, but later returned to live at the small Upper Sioux agency reservation near Granite Falls. Her photo at the left -- taken by her family in 1937, when she was in her 80's`-- shows Mazaokiyewin working a hide with a buffalo-horn scraper. Her grandaughters are Elsie Cavender (Chris's mother, who died in 1991) and Carrie Schommer, recently retired as a Dakota language instructor at the University of Minnesota, Chris's aunt. Through these relationships the project at Inyan Cheyaka Atonwan (Little Rapids Village on the Minnesota river) became very different, from conventional digs, and the awl gave unexpected answers to that question -- "What Does this Awl Mean?" -- of the book's title, because the still-living descendants of the long-abandoned Dakota village site could answer many questions about it, and more importantly, the lifeways of the people before the great disturbances causeed by the whites, and the exile and hardship thereafter.



Continue -- Lower Sioux Mdewakanton Dakota


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Text, maps and graphics copyright -- Paula Giese, 1996, 1997 except where elsewhere attributed.


CREDITS:I did the little map. Info comes mostly from American Indian Reservations and Trust Areas, U.S. Economic Development Administration, Department of Commerce, 1996. Veronica Velarde Tiller compiled this up to date information from tribal council sources for all tribes; same super-valuable info as she has in her book, advertised on her website. Other sources: Encyclopedia articles on Minnesota Ojibwes, Minnesota Indians publication of the league of Women voters, and tribal periodicals. The casino logo comes from a guidebook to Minnesota Indian casinos, sold by the Minnesota Gaming Association. The photo of Isabel Cavendar is from What Does this Awl Mean? An old family photo, it was supplied to the author by the Cavendar family.

Last Updated: 1/20/97