Things To Know About The Lakota Culture

By Ruth Ross


One of the main things that you will hear people talk about whenever they mention this group of people is the fact that their stories are passed down orally without many exceptions. This is something that people in the Lakota culture take very seriously, and it is easy to understand that when you've grown up around people your whole life who do things this way, you're going to follow that same tradition. You have probably heard of or even seen this tradition in action when an elder or a group of elders are telling the younger people a story so that they can learn it and one day pass it on to their children, and that is how the oral tradition perpetuates itself for as long as the people who tell the stories are around for.

When Europeans were setting in many different places across North America, they encountered a lot of Native Americans who they didn't know how to deal with. One of the common ways was to try and convince them to abandon their ways, which would be all that they'd known all their lives, and get them to start doing things the way they were done over in Europe. For obvious reasons, this did not always work out, but it definitely succeeded in stamping out so much of this beautiful culture that is now lost to us forever.

An encouraging fact for those who are proponents of oral traditions is that this is one that has withstood the test of time. Since it is brought to life by actual people rather than artifacts, the tradition stays alive as long as the people do. It is amazing how well this simple yet effective tradition has been.

Traditionally, one of the best times to hear these types of stories is in the wintertime. This is mainly because there is not a lot else to do in the winter. It is too cold to work or play outside, so most of the time people would be huddled around the fire telling stories of the past.

It might seem like the elders have a shortage of stories because they tend to repeat the same ones over and over again. This is actually something that is very intentional, though, because it helps the young ones retain the stories better. Otherwise, it would be hard for all the details to be passed down.

One thing that was lost to European settlers trying to assimilate these people were pictorial diagrams. These were not mere doodles, rather, pieces of history. Every year, they would record the events this way.

An amazing thing about the stories of these people is that they have been keeping track of their histories and beliefs as far back as their people go. This means they can have some pretty hard-to-find historical information. It is interesting to hear things from their perspective.

One story that these people tell us is that the first people to come to earth were turned into buffalo. This is because they were tricked into coming to early. It really makes you think about buffalo in a different way.




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