Mdewakantonwan (currently pronounced Bdewákhathuŋwaŋ[1]) are one of the sub-tribes of the Isanti (Santee) Dakota (Sioux). Their historic home is Mille Lacs Lake in central Minnesota, which in the Dakota language was called mde wakan (mystic/spiritual lake).
As part of the Santee Sioux, their ancestors had migrated from the Southeast of the present-day United States, where the Santee River in South Carolina was named after them. Over the years they migrated up through Ohio and into Wisconsin. They were pressured by the Chippewa and other eastern American Indian peoples, and moved further west into Minnesota.
Nonetheless, in the fall of 1837 the Mdewakantonwan negotiated a lucrative deal under a "removal" treaty with the US government, with payment of nearly a million dollars for the remainder of their lands in western Wisconsin, an application of the Indian Removal policy that benefited them. The Mdewakantonwan had earlier abandoned the lands because of intrusion by the Chippewa and various ecological reasons, and were effectively living in Minnesota.[2]
The Mdewakantonwan are no longer a single unified Tribe but all their descendants ensure their Mdewakanton components survive within their respective communities. In the United States, the Mdewakanton survive in part on the Santee, Flandreau, Sisseton-Wahpehton, and Upper Sioux reservations as Dakota, and on the Mille Lacs Reservation as Ojibwe.
In Canada, the Mdewakanton survives as part of the Sioux Valley Dakota Nation.
Mdewakanton-only communities are Lower Sioux, Shakopee-Mdewakanton and the Prairie Island Indian Community in the United States. The Mendota Mdewakanton Dakota Community is a non-federally recognized Tribe who are currently petitioning the US Department of the Interior for recognition.