Unlike most Sioux reservations, which hold popular elections, the Flandreau Reservation is governed by an executive committee. The Reservation adopted a tribal charter in 1936. Six years later, the community asked Congress to establish it as a reservation under the Indian Reorganization Act of 1935. In 1929, the community voted to establish itself as the Flandreau Santee Sioux Tribe. The government established a boarding school in Flandreau in 1870. Seventy-five families chose this option and homesteaded near Flandreau, South Dakota between 18. History of the Reservation: The terms of the Fort Laramie Treaty of 1868 allowed the Santee Sioux to homestead if they renounced their tribal membership. The Santee established villages around the Mississippi and lower Minnesota Rivers and began hunting buffalo communally. The Dakotas lingered longer, remaining on the prairies of western Minnesota and eastern South Dakota.
Conflicts with the Cree and Anishabe Indians, as well as the lure of the Great Plains’ buffalo herds, impelled the Sioux to move further west in the mid-17th century. About the Flandreau Santee Sioux: The Siouan language family, including Lakota-Dakota-Nakota speakers, inhabited over 100 million acres in the upper Mississippi Region in the 16th and early 17th centuries.
