11 Tribal Nations

• Could this work affect a Tribal Nation, Native children, Tribal data, services, or land? If so, contact the designated Tribal relations office or liaison before planning consultation or engagement.

• This referral page does not provide Nation-specific access guidance. Ask the designated Tribal relations office or liaison which process and contacts apply.

• Before planning consultation or engagement, contact the Office of Indian Policy or current designated Tribal relations office or liaison and follow the required process.
• Work with the Nation's government through the process it designates.

• Do not infer Tribal citizenship or community ties.
• Do not place a sovereign Nation in a general community partner list.
• Do not use general cultural information as a substitute for consultation with the Nation.

Dakota and Anishinaabe peoples are older than Minnesota and older than this department. This land is Dakota homeland in creation stories. It is also a central place in Anishinaabe history — the westward movement along the Great Lakes, wild rice, and the northern forests.

Anishinaabe

Anishinaabe (also written Ojibwe, Ojibwa, Chippewa in U.S. legal English) is a people across the Great Lakes — Minnesota, Wisconsin, Michigan, Ontario, and beyond. Ojibwemowin is the language. Bands in this state are nations.

Dakota

Dakota (Dakhóta) is a people of this prairie and river country, related to Lakota and Nakota — not the same as “Sioux” borrowed from a nineteenth-century statute. Dakota language and Dakota nations in Minnesota survived exile. That sentence is literacy.

What people brought

Nationhood, language, kinship, land relationship, ceremony, wild rice and water as more than commodities, and a record of dealing with the United States as governments. What they met: a territory and then a state that took children, land, and language, and then wrote English forms.

History is literacy for the meeting. It is not a speech you give the family. You do not narrate 1862 to a Dakota parent as icebreaker. You do know it. Ojibwe and Dakota are not flavors of one story.

Name the nation. Geography here is government, not scenery.

Anishinaabe nations

Bois Forte Band of Chippewa (Zagaakwaandagowiniwag) — extreme northern Minnesota; Nett Lake and Vermilion.

Fond du Lac Band of Lake Superior Chippewa (Nagaajiwanaang) — west of Duluth; Cloquet. Urban Duluth households remain the nation.

Grand Portage Band of Lake Superior Chippewa (Gichi-Onigaming) — northeast corner, Lake Superior, a border.

Leech Lake Band of Ojibwe — north central; Cass Lake.

Mille Lacs Band of Ojibwe — central, south and east of Brainerd; Districts I–III as the nation names them.

Red Lake Nation — extreme north, west of Bois Forte; not in the Minnesota Chippewa Tribe union; a distinct land and legal history.

White Earth Nation — northwest; allotment and land restoration are living politics, not a museum.

Dakota nations

Lower Sioux Indian Community (Cansa’yapi) — near Redwood Falls.

Prairie Island Indian Community — near Red Wing, next to a nuclear generating plant.

Shakopee Mdewakanton Sioux Community — south of the Twin Cities near Prior Lake. Economic position is real and is not the Dakota story copied onto the others.

Upper Sioux Community (Pezihutazizi Oyate) — near Granite Falls.

Cities and off-reservation life

Urban Native Minneapolis–St. Paul — Phillips, Little Earth, and the metro as a whole. Off-reservation towns near each nation. People who live in Duluth, Bemidji, Cloquet, Onamia, Prior Lake, Redwood Falls, Granite Falls, Red Wing, and ordinary suburbs.

A reservation address is not the only address. Minneapolis is not the only address. Compass Native American: 55.2 percent Greater Minnesota, 44.8 percent Twin Cities (ACS 2019–2023). That split is the opposite of Hmong Minnesota (about 94 percent Twin Cities). Distance, broadband, and county lines are how the work actually runs. Nationhood is not a ZIP code.

A physician enrolled at White Earth who works in Minneapolis is still of that nation. A scientist at a tribal natural-resources office and a student at a tribal college are the same peoplehood as a household using a waiver. Community portrait means all of that.

Treaties. Broken treaties. Removal. The U.S.–Dakota War of 1862. The largest mass execution in U.S. history at Mankato on 26 December 1862. Internment at Fort Snelling. Exile of Dakota people from Minnesota. Allotment and the Nelson Act of 1889. Boarding schools. Termination-era policy and restoration. The Indian Child Welfare Act of 1978. The Minnesota Indian Family Preservation Act. Haaland v. Brackeen (2023) did not repeal ICWA.

1862 and the boarding-school system

If the Great Migration is the foundational demographic event of modern Black America, 1862 and the boarding-school system are foundational events you cannot skip for Dakota and Anishinaabe Minnesota. They are not “in the past.” They are why a county petition can still sound like removal.

Ordinary movement

People also move for ordinary reasons — work, school, love, health — and remain of their nations. Urban Native Minneapolis is not a leftover. AIM’s founding in Minneapolis in 1968 is Minnesota history.

Boarding school and removal are why mistrust is rational. That is structure. A powwow is public and also nation. It is not the Tuesday on which a county files a petition.

Treaties. 1862. Boarding schools. Allotment. Termination and restoration. AIM in Minneapolis, 1968. ICWA 1978. The Minnesota Indian Family Preservation Act. Haaland v. Brackeen 2023. Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women. Not “in the past.”

The record

A DHS badge is not automatically help. The movement did not succeed so that the form is fair now. Empty follow-up cells on a tribal notice are a structural failure.

There is no U.S. Civil Rights Movement to copy onto this page as a template. The political literacy here is nation-to-nation, child welfare, land, language, and a state that still has to be made to keep its word.

This brief is about the eleven federally recognized Tribal Nations in Minnesota — seven Anishinaabe (Ojibwe) nations and four Dakota nations. They are governments. Consultation is government-to-government. A culture card is not that door. A land acknowledgment without a call is not that door.

Who this is

The eleven nations, as named by the Minnesota Indian Affairs Council:

Anishinaabe reservations: Grand Portage (northeast corner); Bois Forte (extreme north); Red Lake (extreme north, west of Bois Forte); White Earth (northwest); Leech Lake (north central); Fond du Lac (northeast, west of Duluth); Mille Lacs (central, south and east of Brainerd).

Dakota communities: Shakopee Mdewakanton (south of the Twin Cities near Prior Lake); Prairie Island (near Red Wing); Lower Sioux (near Redwood Falls); Upper Sioux (near Granite Falls).

Ojibwe and Dakota are distinct languages, territories, legal histories, and governments. The Minnesota Chippewa Tribe is a government of six Anishinaabe reservations — Bois Forte, Fond du Lac, Grand Portage, Leech Lake, Mille Lacs, and White Earth. Red Lake is not in that union. Dakota nations are not in it. Filing all eleven as “Chippewa” closes the meeting before it starts.

Minnesota Compass’s Native American profile (ACS 2019–2023) counts about 162,216 people — Twin Cities 44.8 percent, Greater Minnesota 55.2 percent. Compass cannot split that count by nation. The number is not enrollment. It is not the eleven. It is not permission to skip the Office of Indian Policy. Date it if you cite it. It is not government-to-government.

Urban Native Minneapolis–St. Paul is part of this brief. People who live off-reservation for work, school, or kinship remain citizens of nations.

A community portrait here is not one socioeconomic slice. Native Minnesotans are attorneys, physicians, scientists, teachers, nurses, people who work for tribally run health and social programs, urban Indian-health clinicians, artists, language teachers, plant and casino workers, students, and elders. The same is true inside each nation. A casino does not make a people. Poverty on a Compass line does not make a people.

Who this is not

Alaska Native people have their own brief. Other U.S. tribal citizens living in Minnesota are not automatically one of the eleven. Mendota Mdewakanton and other communities seeking recognition are not a twelfth nation on this page.

This is not a mash of “communities of color.” Rondo is African American history. Cedar-Riverside is Somali history. Phillips, Little Earth, and the eleven governments are this page.

How to read this

Read it as an orientation. Name the nation. Always defer to this family. Always defer to the nation on who belongs to it.

The facts that follow are meant to help you meet people well — how kinship is held, what respect looks like, what a greeting carries, what a form may land on. History is here so the meeting is clearer, not so you deliver a lecture. Population size is not culture size. Eleven governments are not a small-count brochure.

Kinship systems. Othermothers. Extended care. Who cares for the child may not match a nuclear English form.

Who is family

Aunties, grandparents, clan and tiyospaye relationships, and people who are family without a blood-quantum worksheet — all of that is family. A form that only fits two legal parents in one household cannot see kin.

Ask who should be in the room. A scientist parent, a lawyer aunt, a grandmother who harvests rice, and someone who works for a tribally run program can be the same family. “Broken family” is what the English form says when the household is not nuclear.

ICWA and MIFPA

The Indian Child Welfare Act and the Minnesota Indian Family Preservation Act exist because the state has a record of taking children. Placement preferences, inquiry (“is this child an Indian child?”), notice to the nation, and active efforts are law. Active efforts are documented work with the family’s people, culture, and values — not a box after a removal. Kin search is not optional courtesy.

Who belongs

You do not decide who is Native. The nation does. Blood quantum is colonial technology. Enrollment versus community belonging is nation business. A lobby quiz is not inquiry.

The Minnesota Indian Affairs Council exists to protect the sovereignty of the eleven and the well-being of American Indian citizens throughout the state — including urban. The DHS Office of Indian Policy is a door inside this department. Tribal-State Relations Training is required for many roles. Take it. A land acknowledgment is not a substitute.

Governments, not a mailing list

Nations are seats, not a copy line. Notice to nations on the same day as an eList is not consultation. Empty follow-up cells on a tribal notice are a structural failure.

Minnesota-specific institutions — partners, not a list you copy once: each nation’s government; urban Indian organizations including Native American Community Clinic, Division of Indian Work, Ain Dah Yung, American Indian Family Center, MIGIZI; Little Earth; tribal colleges and language tables; urban Indian health. Pay. Report back. You are a guest.

Staff

Staff of this department include citizens of these nations. They are not unpaid liaisons, unpaid interpreters, or “the community.” Identity is not a staffing plan.

Rondo is African American literacy. Cedar-Riverside is Somali literacy. Phillips, Little Earth, and the eleven governments are this page.

Sovereignty. Land. Kinship. Language. Holistic health — physical, mental, emotional, spiritual as one. Nationhood is the first fact. Culture is not yours to display.

Peoplehood older than the United States

Du Bois’s double consciousness is African American intelligence. It is not a universal minority sentence to copy here. Dakota and Anishinaabe peoplehood is older than the United States. The tension here is not “how to be both Native and American without bleaching.” It is that the United States and this state made treaties, broke them, took children, and still write English forms. You work that fact. You do not perform it.

Not a culture club

Eleven governments. Not a club. A Heritage Month frybread lunch is not the heart of anything.

Language revitalization is nationhood. Manoomin (wild rice) is food and law and season. Wacipi / powwow is public and also nation. Ceremony is not a training module. You are a guest even when the meeting is in a county building.

These concepts recur. They express differently by nation, family, and generation. They are hypotheses — not a script for the person in front of you.

Sovereignty

Governments, not clubs. Treaties are living legal facts. A nation is not a stakeholder list.

Treaty

The United States and Minnesota still sit on treaty ground. All seven Anishinaabe reservations in Minnesota were originally established by treaty and are considered separate and distinct nations by the United States government (Minnesota Indian Affairs Council). Dakota communities in this state are nations that survived exile.

Kinship

Who is family may not fit the form. ICWA and MIFPA placement is the legal expression of that fact in child welfare.

Language

Ojibwemowin and Dakota language revitalization. English is common. A word you learned in a training is not expertise. Language nests and tribal schools are nationhood, not an interpreter convenience.

Land and water

Not a backdrop. Hunting, fishing, ricing, and treaty rights are law, not hobbies.

Ceremony

Nationhood. The American Indian Religious Freedom Act. Not a team-building event. Not a lodge you book as department programming.

Seven Grandfather Teachings

Wisdom, love, respect, bravery, honesty, humility, truth — these are Anishinaabe. They do not paste onto a Dakota household as a values poster. Dakota ethics and kinship have their own names. Ask.

Blood quantum

Colonial technology. Enrollment is nation business.

Two-spirit

Native LGBTQ people exist. Named variation. Not a side note and not a branding exercise.

Urban Native

Not off the list.

A land acknowledgment is not consultation.

Traditional practice and Christianity both live here — often in the same family.

Missions and ceremony

Catholic missions, Episcopal missions, boarding-school Christianity, and traditional ceremony are all Minnesota facts. The American Indian Religious Freedom Act (1978) is law. Ceremony is not a team-building event. Hmong txiv neeb is not a sweat lodge. Dakota lodge is not Anishinaabe lodge by default.

If they name traditional healing, follow their lead and the nation’s. A pastor, a priest, or a healer is the case plan when this family asked. Do not book a lodge as department programming. Do not photograph ceremony.

Boarding-school harm

Spiritual harm from boarding schools is structure: language forbidden, ceremony punished, children taken. That harm sits in the same clinic as ordinary chronic disease. You can hold both. You do not interrogate a ceremony to complete a field.

A white convert to a lodge is not a citizen of a nation. A Dakota person who is Catholic is still Dakota. Mixing those facts is how the meeting goes wrong.

Follow this room. Handshake is common in many rooms. A protocol invented from a training slide is not a greeting. Do not force a hand. A word you learned is not an icebreaker.

Elders and titles

Elders first. Listen longer than the form wants. Titles if they use them. Ask how to say a name.

You are a guest in nation space even when the meeting is in a county building. The Black nod is African American intelligence. As-salāmu ʿalaykum is Somali and Muslim intelligence. Importing another community’s greeting is a mash.

Silence

Silence can be thought, not refusal. Directness is not rudeness. Filling every pause because Minnesota Nice is uncomfortable is not listening.

Ask how to say it. English names, nation names, and language names may all sit on one person. Enrollment names are nation business.

Not a quiz

A name is not a blood-quantum quiz. Do not joke. Do not Anglicize. The form that only fits Mary Jones is a gate.

You do not decide who is Native. A scientist named in English and a language teacher named in Ojibwemowin can be siblings. Neither is more authentic as a case note.

Pronounce Bois Forte, Mille Lacs, Shakopee, Pezihutazizi. If you cannot, ask. Literacy includes the map.

Treaty dates. 1862. 26 December — the Mankato executions; literacy, not a holiday you put on a flyer. Boarding-school remembrance. American Indian Month in Minnesota (May, as the state has marked it). Nation days and powwow calendars some families name. Ricing season. Hunting seasons as treaty practice.

This family’s calendar

A calendar date is literacy. It is not consultation and not a day off the form. “Native holiday” does not belong on a case note. Ask this family and this nation.

Juneteenth is African American literacy. Eid is not this page. Another community’s calendar is not inclusion here.

Listen. Do not photograph ceremony. Hospitality is not consent to extract. Keep medical and legal time.

Guest

Do not record a lodge. Do not ask for a song as a closer. You are a guest. A design is not a logo for the department.

Food offered in a home is courtesy. You still keep the clock for court and clinic. Frybread is not a personality. Refusing everything as professionalism is not courtesy.

Nation offices are not a research site. Pay. Report back.

Ojibwe and Dakota language revitalization. English is common.

What Compass shows

Compass Native American (age 5+): 87.9 percent English only; 12.1 percent a language other than English; 3.2 percent speak English less than very well (ACS 2019–2023). Date it. Low limited-English-proficient numbers on a Compass line are not permission to skip the language an elder asks for.

Book an interpreter if they ask. A word you learned is not expertise. Do not correct English in the lobby.

Silence and story

Silence can be thought, not refusal. Directness is not rudeness. Story and circular speech can be how an elder thinks in public. A short English yes may be exhaustion. Ask whether they agree. A smile is not consent.

Two-spirit and LGBTQ Native people exist. Harm in some churches and in some traditional rooms. Named variation.

Use the name and pronouns. Outing someone to family or to a nation office is not culture. The people-page rule is the workplace rule.

Two-spirit is not a brand you put on a Heritage Month flyer. It is people.

Hair can be spiritual, personal, or neither. Long hair, braids, a ribbon skirt, a jingle dress, a suit in a St. Paul hearing room — all of that is this people. Do not touch. Locs, braids, or long hair are not unprofessional.

CROWN-adjacent harm still happens. Follow this person. A ribbon skirt is not a costume you request.

A lawyer in a ribbon skirt and a scientist in a lab coat are not opposites. They may be the same person on different Tuesdays.

Drum, song, powwow as public and as nation, church music, contemporary Minnesota work. A playlist is not engagement. You are a guest.

A colleague is not a soundtrack of their nation. Powwow is not the only music.

School sport, nation sport, hockey, basketball, softball. Over-representation in a sport is not a personality. The kid may not play. Sport is not the only excellence you can see.

A physician, a software engineer, a language teacher, and a varsity hockey player can be in the same family. The group is not the person.

Oral literature first. Contemporary Native writers in this region. Language texts. This is not a people without letters.

Named writers

Louise Erdrich (Turtle Mountain Band of Chippewa, Minneapolis) is world literature and Minnesota literary life — not one of the eleven, not a mash, a reminder that Native letters are not a museum. Anton Treuer’s Ojibwe-language work is Minnesota public scholarship. Nation newspapers, language curricula, and testimony at the legislature are literature of government.

You do not need to quote a novel in the lobby. You do need to know the record exists. Population size is not culture size.

Beadwork, quill, contemporary studio, wild rice as food and as nation, public art. You are a guest. Pay. A design is not a logo for the department.

A festival is not consultation. An artist who sells work and a chemist at a tribal environmental office are both this portrait.

Alaska Native is a different brief. Other U.S. tribal citizens living in Minnesota are not automatically one of the eleven. First Nations from Canada are not the eleven. Urban Native is not a leftover.

Not one Native module

Never one Native module. “Indigenous” is not a mash with Māori training slides. Open the Alaska Native brief for Alaska Native people. Open this for the eleven and for urban Native Minnesota that still belongs to a nation.

Historic African American, Somali, and Hmong are different cultural intelligences. Shared “people of color” language in a training is not shared nationhood.

Boarding-school history is structure in the school building too.

Schools and colleges

Tribal schools, public schools, language nests, tribal colleges, University of Minnesota and Minnesota State students, attorneys with JDs, physicians, scientists, and teachers.

Bachelor’s or higher among Compass Native American adults 25 and older is 22.5 percent (ACS 2019–2023). High school graduate or higher 88.4 percent. Date it. A rate is not the person.

A degree is not exceptional in a way that insults the rest. Athletics is not the path. Language revitalization is not extra. English-only forms are a gate even when speech is strong.

Teachers and scholars

Anton Treuer’s public Ojibwe-language work, tribal-college faculty, and classroom teachers in Onamia or Red Lake are the same educational story as a Ph.D. They are not a hierarchy of authenticity.

A parent who speaks Dakota or Ojibwe and limited English is not illiterate. The English-only IEP is the gate.

Blood quantum is colonial technology. Enrollment versus community is nation business. Two-spirit people exist. Data sovereignty is nation business.

MMIW and child welfare

Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women is current structure, not a poster. The state has a record of taking children. That is why ICWA exists.

Follow law. Still see a family. Do not out anyone. Mandated reporting still stands.

Not one economy

Gaming revenue at one nation is not the Dakota story. Poverty on a Compass line is not the Anishinaabe story. Scientists, lawyers, doctors, teachers, and professionals in tribally run programs exist in the same nations as people on waivers. Community portrait means all of that. Dominant culture does not get to choose which slice is “the real Native.”

Haaland v. Brackeen (2023) upheld ICWA. That is current law. The Act is not optional because a commenter was uncomfortable.

Pattern, dated: American Indian Minnesotans have among the worst health outcomes of any group in the state — date the specific rate when you have the controlling Minnesota Department of Health or tribal-epidemiology source. Do not invent a number here to sound complete.

Compass

Compass Native American (ACS 2019–2023): 16.2 percent with a disability; 8.5 percent without health insurance; median household income about $58,000; 17.9 percent below poverty. Date it. A rate is not the person.

Systems of care

Indian Health Service, tribal health, urban Indian health, and county clinics are not interchangeable. Olmstead and disability still apply. So does nationhood. Believe reported pain. Historical trauma and ordinary chronic disease sit in the same body. You can hold both.

A physician who is a citizen of White Earth and a patient at an urban Indian clinic are both this page. The clinic is not the whole portrait.

Self-determination contracting (Public Law 93-638). Gaming as nation revenue, not a mascot. Tribal employment. Urban professionals. Trades. Teachers. Health clinicians. Scientists in tribal natural-resources departments. Attorneys in tribal courts and in this department. Identity is not a staffing plan.

Nation economies

A Heritage Month frybread lunch is not consultation. Notice goes to the nation as a government.

Shakopee Mdewakanton’s economic position is real and is not the Dakota story copied onto Upper Sioux or Lower Sioux. White Earth and Red Lake are not one economy. Name the nation. “Casino Indian” is not a type.

Native staff are not unpaid liaisons. Pay the work or do not ask for it.

Ask where they get care. Indian Health Service, tribal health, urban Indian health, and county clinics are not one door. Believe pain. Family and ceremony if they want them.

Refer with competence. Mandated reporting still exists. Staff are not unpaid cultural experts.

Trust

Mistrust is historical and current. Help-seeking that becomes a child-welfare petition is a pattern families already know. Tuskegee is African American medical history — not this page. Do name this pattern: a county file that sounds like removal.

Gender match if they want it. Do not force a handshake. Inquiry under ICWA and MIFPA is not optional curiosity.

Compass Native American (ACS 2019–2023), dated: about 162,216; Twin Cities 44.8 percent, Greater Minnesota 55.2 percent; 40.1 percent age 17 or younger; 7.0 percent 65+; 3.8 percent foreign-born.

Language, education, income

Language (age 5+): 87.9 percent English only, 12.1 percent another language, 3.2 percent English less than very well. Education (25+): 88.4 percent high school or higher, 22.5 percent bachelor’s or higher. Median household income about $58,000; 17.9 percent below poverty; 54.4 percent owner-occupied; average household size 2.54; disability 16.2 percent; without health insurance 8.5 percent.

What the count is not

Compass cannot disaggregate by tribe. Counts disagree with enrollment, with “American Indian alone,” and with “alone or in combination.” Date the number you cite. A rate is not the person.

Child-welfare disproportionality is a gate. Health outcomes — date the controlling Minnesota Department of Health or tribal-epidemiology source. Do not invent a statewide “worst” percentage if you cannot date it.

Population size is not culture size. 162,216 is not permission to write a brochure.

Each nation’s government. Minnesota Indian Affairs Council. DHS Office of Indian Policy. Tribal-State Relations Training. ICWA and MIFPA. Haaland v. Brackeen (2023). Urban Indian organizations named on this page. Compass Native American profile — administrative, not government-to-government. A community leadership council is not a substitute for government-to-government.

Learn on your own time

Take Tribal-State Relations Training. A Native colleague is not an unpaid tutor. Pay partners. Report back.

The Office of Equal Opportunity and Access is a discrimination door, not this page. The African American brief is not this page. Alaska Native is not this page.

Workplace culture and service delivery are both candidates.

Child welfare: ICWA and MIFPA. Active efforts are documented work with the family’s people, culture, and values — not a box after a removal. Kin search is not flavor. If you work that system, the nation is a government, not a culture consult.

Health and disability: IHS, tribal health, urban Indian health, county. They are not interchangeable. Believe reported pain. Olmstead still applies. Ceremony is not DHS programming.

Notices and comment: notice to nations on the same day as an eList is not consultation. Empty follow-up cells are a structural failure. Pay. Report back.

If you skip consultation because you “understand Native culture now,” this failed and it may be unlawful.