North Dakota from the Great Lakes area. The word "Dakota" is a Sioux (Lakota/Dakota) word meaning "allies" or "friends". The primary historic tribal nations in or around North Dakota, are the Lakota and the Dakota ("The Great Sioux Nation" or "Oceti Sakowin," meaning the seven council fires), the Blackfoot, the Cheyenne, the Chippewa (known as Ojibwe in Canada), and the Mandan. The federally recognized tribes have Indian reservations in the state. Social gatherings are known as "powwows" (or wacipis in Lakota/Dakota) continue to be an important part of Native American culture and are held regularly throughout the state. Throughout Native American history,
Native American cultures in the United States a slavery system similar to that of the American colonists, buying African American slaves, especially the Cherokee, Choctaw, and Creek. Though less than 3% of Native Americans owned slaves, divisions grew among the Native Americans over slavery. Among the Cherokee, records show that slave holders in the tribe were largely the children of European men that had shown their children the economics of slavery. As European colonists took slaves into frontier areas, there were more opportunities for relationships between African and Native American peoples. Among the Five Civilized Tribes, mixed-race slaveholders were generally part of an elite hierarchy, often based