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July 11, 2008

From reservation to community

By Tim Krohn

The Lower Sioux Indian Community is in Redwood County, near Morton, on the south banks of the Minnesota River.

Across the river is the Birch Coulee battle site of 1862.

The 1,743-acre area is a small part of the original reservation established in the 1851 treaty of Traverse des Sioux.

That treaty formed the Upper and Lower Sioux reservations, each about 20 miles wide and 70 miles long.

Following the Dakota-U.S. Army conflict, the reservation was sparsely populated. An 1883 census reported just six families there.

Good Thunder came from Flandreau, S.D., in 1884 and purchased 80 acres at the reservation. Good Thunder, born in 1819 was called Walinyanwaste, until baptized as Andrew Good Thunder in 1860. He died in 1901.

Eventually more Dakota, who had been protected by Alexander Faribault, began moving to the Lower Sioux.

By 1936, 20 Mdewakanton families, 18 families from Flandreau and one Sisseton, S.D., family lived there.

Faribault was the son of a French-Canadian fur trader and a Dakota woman. He established a fur trading post.

His knowledge of the Dakota language and culture helped calm relations between the Indians and settlers before and after the conflict.

In 1889, Good Thunder donated land for the construction of the St. Cornelia Episcopal Church, now on the National Register of Historic Places.

The church cemetery is the recent site of reburials of Indian people whose remains had been held by museums and universities.

Through most of the 20th century — before gambling — economic opportunity was limited to some government programs, the making of hand-thrown pottery and the leasing of a gravel mine.

That began to change in 1984 when the Jackpot Junction Bingo parlor opened.

Five years later, with a state compact allowing gambling, blackjack and slots were added.

The casino now has nearly 60 blackjack tables and 1,200 slots.

The Dakota Inn Motel has 122 rooms and there is an RV park, convention center and golf course on site.

While the state has some criminal and legal jurisdiction over the Lower Sioux, the community has its own civil court system and administers its own social programs and community health services.

Many children attend public school in Redwood Falls.

However, concern by parents of their children’s’ treatment led the Dakota to open an Indian-focused charter school in Morton.

The tribe provides financial help to any member wishing to get education beyond high school.

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