Treaties are part of what the U.S. Constitution calls "the supreme law of the land." Yet they are too seldom discussed, too often ignored, and viewed by too many today as ancient history.

Nonetheless, treaties are legally binding agreements that occur nation to nation. Treaties were made between newly formed European settler governments and the sovereign Indigenous nations that already populated the continent.

Today, Natives are often thought of in terms of race, and we are considered people of color. But American Indians specifically are also designated by the federal government as a political classification. This is because we belong to ancient Indigenous tribes that predate the existence of the United States of America and we made treaties with them. These treaties recognized our sovereignty as independent nations.

Treaties, and the U.S. government’s history of unilaterally breaching them, have had a profound effect on Native people. To be blunt, we were lied to. Treaties were used as a ruse to coax tribes out of defending their territory and to steal Native lands and resources.

The U.S. made hundreds of treaties with Native nations. The list is exhaustive. I am Dakota and Lakota from the Oceti Sakowin (Great Sioux Nation), so I will focus on treaties that my people have signed with the government and how that has affected us.

Minnesota is the ancestral land of the Dakota. More than 1 in 10 treaties ever signed by the U.S. involved land in what is today Minnesota.

In the 1851 treaties of Traverse des Sioux and Mendota, Dakota of the Oceti Sakowin (Great Sioux Nation) ceded land in Minnesota to the U.S. in exchange for money, goods, and services. Unbeknownst to the Dakota, Congress eliminated Article 3 of each treaty. This Article set up reservation land within Minnesota for the Dakota to live on. The government also defaulted on payments to the Dakota. It kept more than 80% of the money. Of the payments that were made, the government often gave the money directly to traders who were supposed to supply the Dakota with rations. The withholding of rations by these traders led to the Dakota War of 1862, because the Dakota, of which there were an estimated 6,500 people, were starving. All told, the war lasted a month and a half. About 400 Dakota were arrested by the U.S. military. Ultimately, 38 Dakota men were hung in the largest mass execution in U.S. history, in Mankato, Minnesota, on December 26, 1862, under the orders of President Abraham Lincoln.

The Dakota people were separated after the war. We became exiles. The governor of Minnesota put a bounty on the scalps of every Dakota man, woman, and child. Some Dakota were taken to prison camps in Iowa. Others, like my ancestor Chief Wabasha, were marched to the Crow Creek Reservation in South Dakota. More were moved to Nebraska territory. Most Dakota from the Sisseton and Wahpeton bands were moved to the Lake Traverse Reservation in South Dakota. Some managed to escape to the Spirit Lake Reservation in North Dakota and to Canada. Others died from sickness and famine. More than one-quarter of Dakota in 1862 died during the following year.

In 1863, more than 150 Dakota were massacred at Whitestone Hill, where the cavalry took out their vengeance for the war on many innocent Dakota by ambushing them. Women and children were slaughtered there. They even killed the Dakota’s dogs and horses.