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Main articles: Assiniboine, Assiniboine language, Stoney (people), and Stoney language
The term Nakota (or Nakoda or also Nakona [1] ) is the endonym used by the native peoples of North America that usually go by the name of Assiniboine (or Hohe), in the United States, and also of Stoney, in Canada. They are Dakotan-speaking tribes that had formerly broken away from the main stock of the Sioux nation and had moved farther from the original Minnesota into the northern and north-western regions (Montana, North Dakota, Manitoba, Saskatchewan, Alberta), turning later into bold enemies of their former “allies” [2] .
Contents:
1. History of a misnomer
2. Present trends
3. Notes
4. Sources
1. History of a misnomer
Traditionally, and most extensively [3] , the tribes belonging to the Sioux (or Dakota, in a broad sense) nation used to be classified in three large language groups: the Dakota (proper), who were the eastern-most group (somehow, the original one) and were called Isáŋyathi or Isáŋathi (whence the Europeanized name of Santee), the Lakota, who formed the western-most group and were called Thítȟuŋwaŋ (term Europeanized into Teton) and, finally, the Nakota, who were said to comprehend the two central tribes of the Yankton and the Yanktonai, from whom had formerly broken away the Assiniboine (who consequently spoke a very similar dialect called by the same name). In the course of years, such a partition was sometimes criticized [4] , until 1978, when Douglas R. Parks, David S. Rood, and Raymond J. DeMallie engaged in a systematic linguistic research throughout the Sioux and Assiniboine reservations in order to establish, once and for all, the precise dialectology of the Sioux language [5] . As a result of the research it was, among other things, ascertained that both the Santee and the Yankton/Yanktonai referred (and refer) to themselves as “Dakota”, whereas the name of “Nakota” (or “Nakoda”) was (and is) exclusive apanage of the Assiniboine and of their Canadian relatives, Stoney. Although the following literature, especially if not produced by linguistic specialists, has shown more than a few resistances to share definitively Parks and DeMallie’s achievements [6] , these have been fully confirmed by the twenty-three-year-long research carried out in the field by Jan Ullrich, which led to drawing up his latest Lakota dictionary (published in 2008). According to Ullrich, the misnomer of the Yankton-Yanktonai “began with the mid-nineteenth century missionaries among the Santees who over-applied a rule of phonetic distribution. Because the Yankton-Yanktonai dialect uses the suffix -na where Santee uses -da and Lakota -la, the missionaries thought that the l-d-n distribution applied to all word positions. [7] . Thus they assumed that the Yankton-Yanktonai people called themselves Nakota instead of Dakota. Unfortunately, the inaccurate assumption of a Lakota-Dakota-Nakota division has been perpetuated in almost every publication since then“, getting to win such a great power of convincement that even some Lakota and Dakota people have been influenced by it [8] [9] . The fact that it was not even a subsequent terminological regression caused by the Yankton-Yanktonai people’s living together with the Santees in the same reserves and reservations [10] , is confirmed by the absence, according to Ullrich, of references in the most ancient texts of all the Sioux dialects: in particular, for instance, “John P. Williamson, in his English-Dakota Dictionary (Williamson 1902), lists Dakota as the proper name for the Dakota people but does not mention Nakota” even though he had worked extensively with the Yankton and often included, in his dictionary, Yankton variants for Santee entries [8] . Moreover, Ullrich notices also that it was such a great scholar of Yankton extraction as Ella Cara Deloria (born in 1888), that was the first, or among the very first, to point out “the fallacy of designating the Yankton-Yanktonai groups as Nakota” [8] .
To sum up, anyway, it is ascertained without a doubt by either field-work cited above and by all the on-line sites of the Sioux and Assiniboine-Stoney reserves and reservations that, apart from the possible orthographical variants, at present the groups concerned refer to themselves as follows in their mother tongues, and nothing leads to believe that beforehand it might have happened differently:
Dakhóta (or Dakhód) - the Santees
Dakȟóta (or Dakȟód) - the Yankton and the Yanktonai
Lakȟóta (or Lakȟól) - the Teton (denomination which has however fallen into disuse long ago and is nowadays replaced by the simple Lakȟóta)
Nakhóta (Nakhóda or Nakhóna [11] ) - the Assiniboine [12]
Nakhóda (or Nakhóta) - the Stoney [12]
2. Present trends
At present it is possible to notice, from the Assiniboine and, even more, from the Canadian Stoney, a strong propensity to minimize the past ruptures with the Dakota and to take again their stand, if not in the Sioux nation, which does not exist any longer (if ever), at least in the Sioux tradition. Such a propensity is openly declared on the internet sites associated to the Canadian First nations and, furthermore, it is often officially stated by the tribal representative organisms. It is possible to cite, as examples, the very name taken on by the Alexis Nakota Sioux First Nation [13] or the proud referring of Alberta's Nakoda First Nation to their Sioux ancestry and to the great value of their native language: “As descendants of the great Sioux nations, the Stoney tribal members of today prefer to conduct their conversation and tribal business in the Siouan mother tongue.” [14] . Even more extensive and reasoned is the adhesion to the Sioux tradition from Saskatchewan’s Assiniboine and Stoney tribes [15] . Considering such precedents, it is hardly surprising that the Assiniboine-Stoney tribal structures have given a massive adhesion to the recent pan-Sioux attempts at revivifying the native languages, and especially to the yearly “Lakota, Dakota, Nakota Language Summits”, summoned, as from 2008, by the Lakota non-profit organization for the promotion and strengthening of the language, Tusweca Tiospaye [16] , with the aim of “Uniting the Seven Council Fires to Save the Language” [17] . Given , however, the severance of mutual intelligibility that has been deepening for so long within the Sioux language continuum between the Dakota-Lakota dialects and the Nakota/Nakoda ones [8] , it is quite dubious whether such attempts at an unitary revitalisation of the Sioux language can ever attain any significant results, and, anyway, time alone will be able to tell.
3. Notes
the word linguistic evolution is alike the other Dakotan dialects’: from the original “Dakȟóta/Dakhóta” there has followed the term “Dakȟód/Dakhód” (with the inversion of “t” into “d”); in Lakota that has entailed the ulterior (usual) mutation of “d” into “l”, which has produced “Lakȟól” (cf. Ullrich, ad nomen), as a term variant for “Lakȟóta”; in the same way, in Nakota, beside the form “Nakhóda” has evolved the further variant (with the usual mutation of “d” into “n”) of “Nakhóna” (the orthography used in the present article is the "lakota standard orthography" of Jan Ullrich’s latest New Lakota dictionary). For the usage of the term “nakona” by Fort Peck's Assiniboine, cf.
fpcctalkindian.nativeweb.org/ and
www.neh.gov/grants/guidelines/hisamples/HI-TCU-FortPeck.pdfthe word “nakota”, as well as “dakota” and “lakota”, means, in each of the dialects, “friend”, “ally”
see, as mere examples, Frederick W. Hodge (ed.), Handbook of American Indians North of Mexico, 2 Pts./vols., Bureau of American Ethnology Bulletin 30, Washington, Smithsonian Institution: U.S. Government Printing Office, 1907/1910 (1:376), and Robert H. Lowie, Indians of the plains, American Museum of Natural History. Anthropological Handbook 1, McGraw Hill, New York, 1954 (8)
first of all (or among the very first), by the great yankton/lakota scholar Ella Deloria [cf. below] (Ullrich, p. 2); the inaccuracy of the scheme was also discussed, in 1976, in Patricia A. Shaw’s PhD Dissertation in linguistics at the University of Toronto, bearing the title of “Dakota Phonology and Morphology” (cited by Parks & Rankin, p. 97). For a non-linguist point of view, cf. also E. S. Curtis (The North ..., vol. 3, "The Teton Sioux. The Yanktonai. The Assiniboin", p. 142 [1]): "All tribes of Sioux use the term Dakóta, or Lakóta, to designate those who speak one of the Dakota dialects, excepting the Assiniboin. The latter, however, include themselves under the term (Nakóta)".
a swift presentation of the research can be found in Parks/DeMallie, 1992.
see, as mere examples, the works by G. E. Gibbon and J. D. Palmer cited among the sources of the present article or the good book by di Paul B. Neck about the Dakota chief Inkpaduta (Inkpaduta. Dakota Leader, Norman, University of Oklahoma Press, 2008 (ISBN 978-0-8062-3950-0)
the missionaries were facilitated by the fact that, as regards Lakota, the letter “d” was actually replaced by the letter “l”, in so systematic a way that it completely disappeared from the alphabet (cf. Ullrich, p. 693).
^ Ullrich, p. 2.
Raymond DeMallie reports that the word ‘nakota’ has even “ become a symbol of self-identification for Yankton and Yanktonai young people that distinguished them from the Santee-Sisseton and Teton ...” (“Sioux ...”, p. 750).
a like thesis seems to have been maintained by James H. Howard, who, while admitting that, in modern times, all the oriental and central Sioux groups use the term Dakhóta to designate themselves (and the whole nation), assumes that the form Nakhóta has just "fallen into disuse" among the Yankton and the Yanktonai (The Canadian ..., p. 4)
cf. above
^ the endonym includes both the Assiniboine/Stoney and the Lakota/Dakota.
cf.
www.alexisnakotasioux.com/cf.
www.treaty7.org/BearspawChinikiWesleyNakodaNations.aspxcf.
www.sicc.sk.ca/heritage/sils/ourlanguages/hohenakota/history/name_game.html. According to the Saskatchewan Indian Cultural Centre (SICC), moreover, there are even some elder Stoneys that say they can understand Lakota better than Assiniboine and assume they are actually “Rocky Mountains’Sioux”, rather than the Hohes’ simple descendants.
Thuswéčha Thióšpaye (Dragonfly's Clan)
cf.
www.tuswecatiospaye.org/summit. Also from the Lakota promoters of the initiative there is an explicit acknowledgement of a community of origins with the Nakota peoples: 2008’s “ Language Summit was an effort to unite the Lakota, Dakota, and Nakota (“Sioux”) oyate (“peoples”) in both the United States and Canada in a collective and committed effort to revitalize and strengthen the Lakota, Dakota, and Nakota languages” (“their beautiful languages”, as written below).In the presentation of the 2009 Summit, the promoters have gone still farther: in listing the tribes forming the “Seven Council Fires”, the Assiniboin and Stoney have been at first included in the Fire of the Yanktonai (from whom they are said to have formerly seceded), and later, probably owing to somebody’s complaints, they have been shifted to the foot of the list, but the wording ‘Also includes the Stoney and Assiniboine People’ has been retained.
4. Sources
Curtis, Edward S., The North American Indian : being a series of volumes picturing and describing the Indians of the United States, and Alaska (written, illustrated, and published by Edward S. Curtis ; edited by Frederick Webb Hodge), Seattle, E. S. Curtis [Cambridge, Mass. : The University Press], 1907-1930, 20 v. (Northwestern University)
DeMallie, Raymond J. , “Sioux until 1850”; in Raymond J. DeMallie (ed.), Handbook of North American Indians: Plains (Vol. 13, Part 2, p. 718-760), William C. Sturtevant (Gen. Ed.), Smithsonian Institution, Washington, D.C., 2001 (ISBN 0-16-050400-7)
Guy E. Gibbon, The Sioux: the Dakota and Lakota nations, Malden, Blackwell Publishers, 2003 (ISBN 1557865663)
Howard, James H., The Canadian Sioux, Lincoln, University of Nebraska Press, 1984 (ISBN 0-8032-2327-7)
Lewis, M. Paul (a cura di), 2009. Ethnologue: Languages of the World, Sixteenth edition, Tex.: SIL International. Online version:
www.ethnologue.com/Palmer, Jessica D., The Dakota peoples: a history of the Dakota, Lakota, and Nakota through 1863. Jefferson: McFarland & Company, Inc., Publishers, 2008 (ISBN 0786431776)
Parks, Douglas R., DeMallie, Raymond J., "Sioux, Assiniboine and Stoney Dialects: A Classification", Anthropological Linguistics, Special Issue, Florence M. Voegelin Memorial Volume, Vol. 34:1-4, 1992.
Parks, Douglas R. & Rankin, Robert L., “The Siouan languages”, in Raymond J. DeMallie (ed.), Handbook of North American Indians: Plains (Vol. 13, Part 1, p. 94-114), William C. Sturtevant (gen. ed.), Smithsonian Institution, Washington, 2001.
Ullrich, Jan, New Lakota Dictionary : Lakhótiyapi-English / English-Lakhótiyapi & Incorporating the Dakota Dialects of Santee-Sisseton and Yankton-Yanktonai, Bloomington, Lakota Language Consortium, 2008 (ISBN 0-9761082-9-1).
Christopher Westhorp, Pocket guide to native Americans, Salamander Books, Londra, 1993 (ISBN 1856000230) - Italian edition consulted: Indiani. I Pellerossa Tribù per Tribù, Idealibri, Milan, 1993 (ISBN 88-7082-254-0).
This article is a substantial translation from Nakota in the Italian Wikipedia.
Categories: Wikipedia articles needing copy edit from October 2009, All articles needing copy edit, Native American tribes, First Nations, Sioux
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