Nakota people

The term Nakota (or Nakoda or also Nakona) is the endonym used by those native peoples of North America who usually go by the name of Assiniboine (or Hohe), in the United States, and of Stoney, in Canada.

They are Dakotan-speaking tribes that broke away from the main branches of the Sioux nation in earlier times. They moved farther from the original territory of the woodlands of present-day Minnesota into the northern and northwestern regions: Montana and North Dakota of the present-day United States and Manitoba, Saskatchewan, and Alberta of present-day Canada. Later they became competitors for resources and enemies of their former language-family "allies". (In each of the dialects, nakota, dakota and lakota means "friend" or "ally".)

Historically, scholars classified the tribes belonging to the Sioux nation (or Dakota in a broad sense) into three large language groups:

The Assiniboine had separated from the Yankton-Yanktonai grouping at an early time. Their language, called Nakota as well, became more distinct and unintelligible to Lakota and Dakota speakers.

For a long time, very few scholars criticized this classification.

In 1978, Douglas R. Parks, David S. Rood, and Raymond J. DeMallie engaged in systematic linguistic research at the Sioux and Assiniboine reservations to establish the precise dialectology of the Sioux language. They ascertained that both the Santee and the Yankton/Yanktonai referred (and refer) to themselves by the autonym "Dakota." The name of Nakota (or Nakoda) was (and is) exclusive usage of the Assiniboine and of their Canadian relatives, the Stoney. The subsequent academic literature, however, especially if it is not produced by linguistic specialists, has seldom reflected Parks and DeMallie’s work.

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