The Flandreau Santee Sioux Tribe is comprised primarily of descendents of “Mdewakantonwan”, a member of the Isanti division of the Great Sioux Nation, and refer to themselves as Dakota, which means friend or ally. The Flandreau Santee Sioux Indian Reservation is 2,500 acres of land located along and near the Big Sioux River in Moody County, South Dakota, in a region known as the Prairie Coteau, which consists primarily of undulating or gently rolling land. At European contact, the Dakota lived in Minnesota and Wisconsin. After many years of semi-nomadic existance, and due to pressure from white settlers, the Santee ceded their land and entered a reservation in 1851