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Rosebud Reservation
Homeland of the Sicangu Lakota
The Rosebud Reservation covers about 1,970 square miles of rolling prairie and river valleys in south-central South Dakota, home of the Rosebud Sioux Tribe, the Sicangu Lakota. Sicangu Oyate means 'Burnt Thigh Nation,' a name the French translated as Brulé. Like Pine Ridge, the reservation was cut from the Great Sioux Reservation in 1889, and its original boundaries of about 3.2 million acres have since been greatly reduced. The tribal headquarters is in the town of Rosebud.
Sinte Gleska University, one of the first tribal colleges, is named for Spotted Tail, the 19th-century Sicangu leader who signed the Fort Laramie Treaty of 1868. In 2020 the tribe's development corporation created the Wolakota Buffalo Range, restoring bison to nearly 28,000 acres of native grassland. The following year the remains of nine Sicangu children who died at the Carlisle Indian Industrial School in Pennsylvania were brought home for burial. A 20-member council represents the reservation's 20 communities.