Qualla: Standing Rock Sioux Reservation

Standing Rock Sioux Reservation: Introduction

Thu, 05 Feb 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit U.S. Department of the Interior, CC BY-SA 2.0. Former Indian agent Valentine McGillycuddy watched the panic spreading through government offices in 1890 and offered a pointed comparison: "If the Seventh-Day Adventists prepare the ascension robes for the Second Coming of the Savior, the United States Army is not put in motion to prevent them. Why should not the Indians have the same privilege?" He was talking about the Ghost Dance, a spiritual movement that terrified federal authorities on the Standing Rock Reservation. The troops came anyway. Sitting Bull died. Three hundred Lakota were killed at Wounded Knee. More than a century later, Standing Rock would again draw the eyes of the nation -- this time over a pipeline, a river, and the question of whose water matters.

Image: U.S. Department of the Interior | CC BY-SA 2.0

Standing Rock Sioux Reservation: The Shattering of a Homeland

Thu, 05 Feb 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Daderot, Public domain. The Standing Rock Reservation exists because the Great Sioux Reservation was destroyed. In 1890, the United States government broke up that enormous territory -- which had encompassed the majority of what is now South Dakota -- into five smaller parcels. The stated intent was blu...

Image: Daderot | Public domain

Standing Rock Sioux Reservation: Dawn on the Grand River

Thu, 05 Feb 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Unknown authorUnknown author or not provided, Public domain. Sitting Bull, the Hunkpapa Lakota leader who had helped defeat Custer at Little Bighorn, lived along the Grand River on the Standing Rock Reservation. Indian Agent James McLaughlin considered him the driving force behind the Ghost Dance and ordered his arrest. On December 15, 189...

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Standing Rock Sioux Reservation: Drowned by Progress

Thu, 05 Feb 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Unknown authorUnknown author or not provided, Public domain. In the 1960s, the Army Corps of Engineers and the Bureau of Reclamation built five large dams on the Missouri River under the Pick-Sloan Missouri Basin Program. The dams provided flood control and hydroelectric power for the region. They also flooded vast tracts of Standing Rock ...

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Standing Rock Sioux Reservation: Sacred Stone and the Water Protectors

Thu, 05 Feb 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Unknown authorUnknown author or not provided, Public domain. On April 1, 2016, LaDonna Brave Bull Allard, an elder of the Standing Rock Sioux Tribe, established the Sacred Stone Camp on her private land near the Missouri River. The Dakota Access Pipeline, rerouted away from Bismarck after being deemed too risky for that city's water supply...

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Standing Rock Sioux Reservation: The Council Fire Still Burns

Thu, 05 Feb 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Unknown authorUnknown author or not provided, Public domain. Standing Rock is governed by an elected 17-member Tribal Council, including representatives from eight regional districts stretching from Fort Yates and Cannonball in the north to Kenel and Wakpala in the south. The tribal college, Sitting Bull College, operates from Fort Yates. ...

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