The Sicangu (burnt thighs) received their name when some of the Lakota peoples' legs were burned in a great prairie fire. The French later named them Brule, and two large groups of the band would be settled on two reservations, Rosebud and Lower Brule in South Dakota. Author Donovin Sprague examines the history of the Rosebud Sioux through a collection of photographs and personal family interviews.

Thomas Biolsi's study traces the origins of racial tension between Native Americans and whites to federal laws themselves, showing how the courts have created opposing political interests along race lines.".

Transplanted from what he considered civilization to the desolation of the Rosebud Indian Reservation, a ten-year-old boy becomes resourceful. What he learns will shape the ways in which he eventually would teach. Rather than stunting development, the reservation's history, culture and education become the stimuli for it. The boy immerses himself in the peaceful Lakota culture, reacts against its developing militancy, and eventually learns acceptance. Accustomed to team sports and ice cream shops, the fifth-grader relocates with his family to the reservation in 1957 and finds nothing familiar. He and his friends live in the poorest region of South Dakota; their only resources are their imaginations and curiosity. They explore, build, hunt, and become interested in girls. This is their story of Survival on the Rosebud Indian Reservation. It's easy for a kid to poke fun at foods and traditions different from his own. The author notes, The more experiences I had with the Lakota culture, the more respect I developed for it. I reached a point at which it was difficult to view the Lakota objectively. I'd become part of them.About the Author: David Clifford Grieser is an educator in Des Moines, Iowa. Michelangelo once described his sculpting as freeing his subjects from the marble in which they were encased. I felt the same way as I wrote: My subjects and events were encased in a past, and I wanted to eliminate the extraneous surroundings, so that readers could see them. The obstacles, then, were to extract no more or less than what I needed to be accurate. Completing the book was a testament to the Lakota people to whom I owed so much. Publisher's Website: http: //sbpra.com/DavidCliffordGriese

This tribe of South Dakota has met the challenge of living in the 20th century by expressing religion and beliefs in a cultural style that mixes tradition and Christian influence with western technology.

A child of a typical 1950s suburb unearths her mother's hidden heritage, launching a rich and magical exploration of her own identity and her family's powerful Native American past.

When Andrew Jackson’s removal policy failed to solve the “Indian problem,” the federal government turned to religion for assistance. Nineteenth-century Catholic and Protestant reformers eagerly founded reservation missions and boarding schools, hoping to “civilize and Christianize” their supposedly savage charges. In telling the story of the Saint Francis Indian Mission on the Sicangu Lakota Rosebud Reservation, Converting the Rosebud illuminates the complexities of federal Indian reform, Catholic mission policy, and pre- and post-reservation Lakota culture. Author Harvey Markowitz frames the history of the Saint Francis Mission within a broader narrative of the battles waged on a national level between the Catholic Church and the Protestant organizations that often opposed its agenda for American Indian conversion and education. He then juxtaposes these battles with the federal government’s relentless attempts to conquer and colonize the Lakota tribes through warfare and diplomacy, culminating in the transformation of the Sicangu Lakotas from a sovereign people into wards of the government designated as the Rosebud Sioux. Markowitz follows the unpredictable twists in the relationships between the Jesuit priests and Franciscan sisters stationed at Saint Francis and their two missionary partners—the United States Indian Office, whose assimilationist goals the missionaries fully shared, and the Sicangus themselves, who selectively adopted and adapted those elements of Catholicism and Euro-American culture that they found meaningful and useful. Tracing the mission from its 1886 founding in present-day South Dakota to the 1916 fire that reduced it to ashes, Converting the Rosebud unveils the complex church-state network that guided conversion efforts on the Rosebud Reservation. Markowitz also reveals the extent to which the Sicangus responded to those efforts—and, in doing so, created a distinct understanding of Catholicism centered on traditional Lakota concepts of sacred power.

Sioux women are the center of tribal life and the core of the tiospaye, the extended family. They maintain the values and traditions of Sioux culture, but their own stories and experiences often remain untold. Virginia Driving Hawk Sneve combed through the winter counts and oral records of her ancestors to discover their past. The result, Sioux Women: Traditionally Sacred, illuminates the struggles and joys of her grandmothers and other women who maintained tribal life as circumstances changed and outside cultures pushed for dominance.

A mostly photographic essay presenting the Brule, or Burnt Thigh, Sioux native Americans in the 19th and 20th centuries.

This book recalls the author's early upbringing and education on two Indian reservations. Davis assesses the policies of the United States government regarding the status of Indians in society, and relates the Indian struggle for survival, self-governance, and sovereignty.

Jimmy McClean is a Lakota boy—though you wouldn’t guess it by his name: his father is part white and part Lakota, and his mother is Lakota. When he embarks on a journey with his grandfather, Nyles High Eagle, he learns more and more about his Lakota heritage—in particular, the story of Crazy Horse, one of the most important figures in Lakota and American history. Drawing references and inspiration from the oral stories of the Lakota tradition, celebrated author Joseph Marshall III juxtaposes the contemporary story of Jimmy with an insider’s perspective on the life of Tasunke Witko, better known as Crazy Horse (c. 1840–1877). The book follows the heroic deeds of the Lakota leader who took up arms against the US federal government to fight against encroachments on the territories and way of life of the Lakota people, including leading a war party to victory at the Battle of the Little Bighorn. Along with Sitting Bull, Crazy Horse was the last of the Lakota to surrender his people to the US army. Through his grandfather’s tales about the famous warrior, Jimmy learns more about his Lakota heritage and, ultimately, himself. American Indian Youth Literature Award