A land neither here nor there: voices from the margins & the untenuring of Lakota lands

Abstract

As Lakota people strive to honor their relatives’ contributions to contemporary societal values, there remains a need to think about the broader implications of their elders land tenure histories. For Lakota, forced assimilation by varying federal agencies into agrarian lifestyles and individual land ownership was a major societal shift away from former Lakota lifeways, however the communities in this study accomplished those agrarian agendas in the early 1900s. Forced assimilation into agrarian lifestyles wasn’t enough, in 1942 their lands were condemned, and they were left with uncertain futures. The 341,726 acres that supported the community of Upper Medicine Root and others, once within the jurisdiction of the Pine Ridge Indian Reservation in South Dakota, was condemned in the summer of 1942, displacing 125 families for the purposes of military training to aid in World War II efforts. This study explores how this particular event, creates a slow and rather violent landscape scale narrative of trauma. This research includes interviews with Lakota elders who experienced these events first hand, a content analysis of primary documents and other first-hand accounts as well as federal archival documents. These resources offer insights into the experiences of these families in 1942, particularly what homestead life was like, how the removal was communicated to the residents, details of the lived experience of removal and the aftermath. The study concludes with ongoing land tenure struggles and broader implications of community wide legacies couched in an unwavering pursuit to reclaim the lands that were condemned and therefore reclaim their cultural and familial landscape.