Minnesota Communities

11 Tribal Nations

This program defers to the Office of Indian Affairs and to the Department of Human Services offices that handle Tribal relations and consultation for anything concerning Native American individuals, communities, or Tribal Nations. That deference is standing, not a brief under construction — this program does not complete or expand this content on its own. For anything substantive, contact the Office of Indian Affairs or the Department of Human Services offices that handle Tribal relations and consultation directly.

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Eleven federally recognized Tribal Nations share geography with Minnesota. Each is a sovereign government with its own name, laws, leadership, and consultation process. Urban Native people also live throughout the state. This page explains when staff should seek government-to-government guidance; it does not provide Nation-specific guidance.

Relationships begin with sovereignty

Tribal Nations are contemporary governments as well as communities with distinct histories and cultures. Minnesota Indian Affairs offers a starting point for learning about those government relationships. Respect includes recognizing each Nation’s authority to speak and make decisions for itself.

Explore Minnesota Indian Affairs

A different starting point

Before shaping a proposal, whose governmental authority and designated consultation process must guide the next step?

Community overview

Each Nation is distinct. Do not infer a person's Tribal citizenship, community ties, language, or residence.

Names and terms

The Nation's own name (for example Red Lake Nation, Lower Sioux Indian Community)

Also used: American Indian; Native American; Indigenous

Name the Nation. Do not use a demographic count as a substitute for a government.

History, culture, and life today

History and place

Origins and the Founding of a People

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.

Geography

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.

History and the decisions we make today

In this lesson

Connect a historical condition described in the brief to a present-day service question.

Distinguish community-level context from an individual’s circumstances.

Identify evidence needed before changing a service requirement.

Origins and the Founding of a People

Anishinaabe

Dakota

What people brought

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.

Geography

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.

Migration and Foundational Events

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.

Civil Rights Memory

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.

Historical and cultural learning does not replace government-to-government consultation. Begin with the Tribal Relations guidance and the Nation’s own designated contacts.

Family, identity, and individual experience

In this lesson

Recognize differences in identity, language, and experience within a community.

Ask about a person’s relationships without prescribing who should be involved.

Identify an assumption that could distort a service conversation.

People, place, and perspective

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.

From understanding to an equity analysis

In this lesson

Identify a specific access barrier in a proposed process.

Name whose input would help evaluate the decision.

Choose a way to check whether a revision improves access.

Education

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.

Other Considerations

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.

Health

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.

11 Tribal Nations

Relationships begin with sovereignty

Community overview

Names and terms

History, culture, and life today

Anishinaabe

Dakota

What people brought

Anishinaabe nations

Dakota nations

Cities and off-reservation life

1862 and the boarding-school system

Ordinary movement

The record

Who this is

Who this is not

How to read this

Who is family

ICWA and MIFPA

Who belongs

Governments, not a mailing list

Staff

Peoplehood older than the United States

Not a culture club

Sovereignty

Treaty

Kinship

Language

Land and water

Ceremony

Seven Grandfather Teachings

Blood quantum

Two-spirit

Urban Native

Missions and ceremony

Boarding-school harm

Elders and titles

Silence

Not a quiz

This family’s calendar

Guest

What Compass shows

Silence and story

Named writers

Not one Native module

Schools and colleges

Teachers and scholars

MMIW and child welfare

Not one economy

Compass

Systems of care

Nation economies

Trust

Language, education, income

What the count is not

Learn on your own time

Government-to-government relationships

Sources

Continue the connection

History and the decisions we make today

In this lesson

Anishinaabe

Dakota

What people brought

Anishinaabe nations

Dakota nations

Cities and off-reservation life

1862 and the boarding-school system

Ordinary movement

The record

Family, identity, and individual experience

In this lesson

Who this is

Who this is not

From understanding to an equity analysis

In this lesson

Schools and colleges

Teachers and scholars

MMIW and child welfare

Not one economy