South Dakota

Describes the geography, plants, animals, history, economy, religions, culture, sports, arts, and people of South Dakota.

President U.S. Grant's national Peace Policy of 1869 set in motion the South Dakota Missionary movement. The peace plan assigned one religious denomination to each Indian Reservation to 'Christianize and civilize' the Indian. When religious groups protested the government's policy of exclusion, the limitations of the policy were lifted in 1881. Soon thereafter, many denominations were allowed to establish missions where they wanted. Soon missions, churches, and schools of many different Christian affiliations dotted the reservations, often within a few miles of one another. In Lakota Sioux Missions, over two hundred historical photographs illustrate the story of the mission era, its intended policy of assimilation, the resistance to change, and eventual compromise.

A pictorial review of the lifestyles of the Schmiedeleut division of Hutterites from 44 of 53 colonies throughout South Dakota. Photos in this work were taken over all four seasons in 2004.

Winner of the Oakland “Blue Collar” PEN Award A work of history, a manifesto, and an intergenerational story of resistance that shows how two centuries of Indigenous struggle created the movement proclaiming “Water is Life” In 2016, a small protest encampment at the Standing Rock reservation in North Dakota, initially established to block construction of the Dakota Access oil pipeline, grew to be the largest Indigenous protest movement in the twenty-first century, attracting tens of thousands of Indigenous and non-Native allies from around the world. Its slogan “Mni Wiconi”—Water is Life—was about more than just a pipeline. Water Protectors knew this battle for Native sovereignty had already been fought many times before, and that, even after the encampment was gone, their anti-colonial struggle would continue. In Our History is the Future, Nick Estes traces traditions of Indigenous resistance leading to the #NoDAPL movement from the days of the Missouri River trading forts through the Indian Wars, the Pick-Sloan dams, the American Indian Movement, and the campaign for Indigenous rights at the United Nations. While a historian by trade, Estes also draws on observations from the encampments and from growing up as a citizen of the Oceti Sakowin (the Nation of the Seven Council Fires), making Our History is the Future at once a work of history, a personal story, and a manifesto.

"Using over 200 images, authors Mike Wiese and Tom Hayes take the reader on a historic tour of the depots, trains, and wrecks that defined South Dakota railroading in the early part of the 20th century." -- back cover.