The Rosebud Sioux, people native to the area now called Rosebud Reservation have never lived without the oversight of the U.S. government. Though people have lived there long before 1776. This is because the Rosebud Sioux is a name given to a conglomeration of many Sioux people who were forced from their homes to this small tract of land. They were pushed into this land by the government with the treaty of Fort Laramie. The people here have always had, and continue to have a flourishing cultural identity. And Despite fewer barriers to accessible food options compared to other reservations, the people of the Rosebud Reservation still often struggle with food insecurity because access to welfare programs is limited to those who are employed. Though the struggle for food has been manufactured by the U.S. government the Sioux who live here do not passively submit to these coercive practices, instead they practice survivance through embracing their heritage. They resist and survive this subjugation through artistic expression.
Though the Rosebud reservation in Southern South Dakota has greater access to food, is (slightly) less impoverished, and has more grocery stores per person compared to other reservations, in 1990 there was still an unemployment rate that was more than 4.8 times the national average (5.6% for the whole U.S.[BLS] as opposed to 27.3% within the reservation [Vinje, 15]).
This is so important to understanding the struggle of food security for Sioux people because the Temporary Assistance to Needy Families (TANF) bill was passed into law in 1997, which shifted the aid given to families to be dependent upon employment. This deeply affected many family’s access to food security. One woman who can no longer receive TANF benefits because she is unemployed shares her story of the struggle for food, “food stamps only last … two weeks, and it’s not enough food stamps. We don’t have enough food.” (Biolsi, et al. 144) This struggle only becomes more difficult when unexpected or large purchases must be made, such as a home, as described by the same woman, “We have a brand new [house]. Jee I wish we never did that, but it’s the only home we could have. And I look at our refrigerator sometimes and there ain’t anything there half the time.” (Biolsi, et al.)
Though these studies are modern and were conducted more than a century past our class discussion ended, they show the continued struggle of native people to receive what they are owed. Not only as specifically native people who have had their treaties unfulfilled, but also as all human beings who deserve food and clean water. The descendants of these Sioux, who collected their ration cards more than a hundred years before these studies still struggle with food security. They still struggle in the federally sequestered lands of the west, devoid of the ability to acquire food as their nation had for centuries. Reliant upon the government that stole their land and lifeways for the meager rations of food they barely survive on. The struggle is not the whole of the Native story though, not 150 years ago, and not now. Native people have continued to survive, resist, and continue their cultural practices. One essential aspect of this survival is reliance upon their communities and kinship networks to survive. “By far the most important strategy for making ends meet, however, is relying on the generosity of kinspersons and friends in one’s personal network. This is not borrowing in the formal sense of a debt to be paid back, but reciprocity between people who care about each other and trust each other.” (Biolsi, et al. 146-7) This system which relies on kinship networks, community, and generosity is an essential aspect of the Lakota value system (Biolsi, et al. 147)
Another essential facet of resistance to governmental authority and control is with artistic expression. This has been a powerful form of defiance for as long as there has been bureaucratic control over them. Just as they did with the decorated ration card case I discussed in my four views project, dance has been just as powerful a tool. This is a story not purely of being beaten down, but one of survivance through that suppression. It may be easier to imagine that access to food was not an intentional harm done by the U.S. government and was purely an unintentional consequence of the removal of native people from their homes. This is not the case, however, while the government was actively enforcing assimilation efforts in 1896, many tribal dances were banned and, “those guilty of a first offense would forfeit rations, or be jailed, for up to ten days. Subsequent offenses meant lost rations, or jail, for up to thirty days.” Food security is a tool used by the government to control the actions of the native population. Still today it is used as such, because of the TANF act those native people not willing or able to assimilate to the established culture of the United States and engage in the capitalist system, i.e. get a job, are punished with lack of access to food, shelter, and healthcare. These acts of controlling cultural practices continued into the 20th century during the first world war when the BIA “…kept up the assault on dances by insisting that they were ‘acts of disloyalty and an attempt to subvert the will of the government.” They punished those who participated when, “…Once again, agents withheld annuities from dancers, including, with some irony, returning Indian veterans.” (Ellis 1999, 148). However, the government was “unable to prevent homecoming dances” (Ellis 1999, 148) During the 1940’s many plains nations peoples practiced artistic defiance to BIA authority, “Indian communities sent their young men to Europe with appropriate songs, rituals, and dances widely used in the pre-reservation era. Although not all tribes held military society dances per se, the treatment accorded veterans undoubtedly established a connection between pre-reservation military societies, their dances, and the honor traditionally accorded their members.” (Ellis 1999, 149)
Though bureaucratic control within native communities has gravely harmed native people by controlling their access to food, native people have re-engaged with pre-reservation cultural practices as an act of survival and resistance.
Works Cited
Becker, Zachary; Scully, Jason; Hill, Margo; et al. “Mobility and Resource Accessibility for Federally Recognized American Indian Reservations within the Western United States.” Eastern Washington University, 2021.
Biolsi, Thomas; Cordier, Rose; Douville Two Eagle, Marvin; et al. “Welfare Reform on Rosebud Reservation: Challenges for Tribal Policy.” Wicazo Sa Review, vol. 17, no. 1, Spring 2002, pp. 131-158. https://doi.org/10.1353/WIC.2002.0003.
Ellis, Clyde. “We Don’t Want Your Rations, We Want this Dance: The Changing Use of Song and Dance on the Southern Plains.” Western Historical Quarterly, vol. 30, no. 2 Summer, 1999, pp. 133-154. https://doi.org/10.2307/970489
“Notice.” Bureau of Labor Statistics, https://data.bls.gov/pdq/SurveyOutputServlet. Accessed 3 June 2024.
Vinje, David L. “Native American Economic Development on Selected Reservations: A Comparative Analysis.” The American Journal of Economics and Sociology, vol. 55, no. 4, 1996, pp. 427-442. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1536-7150.1996.tb02641.x