Relatives are very important in Dakota/Lakota culture.  Everyone belongs to an extended family called their tiospaye (tee oh’ shpa yeah).  We white people might call it our clan.

Your mother’s sisters are also considered to be your mother.  Your father’s brothers are also your father.  Your first cousins are your brothers and sisters.  There isn’t a distinction made for step-kids.   Many children are raised by their grandparents.  Many homes are multi-generational.

Traditionally, a son-in-law was not supposed to speak to his wife’s mother.  I suppose that prevented a lot of problems back in the days when families lived together in tepees.

In Dakota/Lakota society, the tepee (house now) is the property of the woman.  I’ve heard men joke around when they are getting out of prison in the Fall, that they had better find a woman who will let them live with her over the winter.

Families are typically large now.  In traditional times they weren’t since going hunting for a lot of mouths to feed was more than most men could do.

There are cultural prohibitions against having a romantic relationship with someone in your tiospaye.

One young man from Rapid City told me about going back to his reservation with his mother.  One of his cousins invited him to attend a party.  At the party he met a cute girl and he said they played some kissy face.  The next morning his mother asked him if he’d had a good time at the party and whom he had met.  He mentioned the girl’s name and his mother told him that was his cousin.  He said he nearly threw up thinking what they had been doing at the party.  He said in the future, he always asked lots of questions to see if a girl was one of his relatives before he put any moves on her.

Some inmates have met their father for the first time in prison.  One man I know decided it would be good to be the cellmate of the father he had never known so they could become acquainted. A week later he told me he asked for a different cellmate and thought he would change his last name so no one would know that man was his father.  His father had a reputation of “tuning up” his cellmates.  He always thought of himself first.

Then there are the Native inmates who were adopted as babies by white families and are searching for their biological parents.  Some want to get enrolled in their tribe.  If they want to be able to order eagle feathers from the Eagle Repository, they must be enrolled in a tribe.

One new inmate came to if I could help him learn about his family.  He knew the names of his biological mother and father and knew they were from Pine Ridge.  I sent an email with his request to the tribal enrollment office.  They emailed his family tree back to me to give to him. He was the great-grandson of Nicholas Black Elk, a famous Lakota spiritual leader and also a noted Catholic catechist.  In fact Nicholas Black Elk is a candidate for sainthood in the Catholic Church,“Walking the Good Red Road: Nicholas Black Elk’s Journey to Sainthood”.  I was able to give his great-grandson a couple of books about his life and teachings.   I told the young man he had hit the jackpot on ancestors.

At the Wounded Knee cemetery, there is a monument showing the names of the people buried there who were massacred at the “battle” of Wounded Knee on Dec. 29, 1890.  Their descendants carrying their last names are very proud of them.  For them the massacre didn’t happen years ago.  It is still very much alive in their family stories.  In fact my grandparents came to South Dakota from Sweden just two years after the massacre .There were soldiers stationed at Ft. Sisseton in northeastern South Dakota to protect the homesteaders from the threat of Indian attacks.

Besides biological relatives, people can adopt a friend as a “hunka” relative.  There is even a ceremony to do this which has been performed a few times at powwows in the penitentiary. A “hunka” relative is considered to be just as strong a relative as a sibling or grandparent might be.

Being a relative involves more than being related to someone.  If one of your relatives has more money or things than you have, they are expected to share with you.  There is an expression that “there is no such thing as a rich Indian” because they are expected to share their good fortune.

They are also expected to help you get a job or do favors for you.  When there have been Natives employed at the penitentiary, members of their tribe expect favors from them.  Of course, the officers must treat everyone the same so the members of their tribe start being nasty to them when they don’t give them preferential treatment.  Native officers don’t usually stay long.

Tribal cops have the same problem.  One former tribal cop said he had to arrest his own mother once.

One Native inmate told me that although there was always someone complaining that they didn’t have a Native American for their volunteer, it was good I was their volunteer since I didn’t owe allegiance to any family or tribe and treated everyone the same.

Mary Montoya