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“Voters on the Pine Ridge Reservation overwhelmingly approved a ballot measure to change the name of their county on Tuesday.
Shannon County will now be known as Oglala Lakota County. The measure passed with 80 percent of the vote, according to the Secretary of State.
“I think the biggest thing look back at history and see who lived here and who Peter Shannon was and there is a need to change it,” Rep. Kevin Killer (D), a member of the Oglala Sioux Tribe who led the petition to change the name, told The Native Sun News back in June. “There is also value in creating and using our own names for some of these things for future generations to learn from.”
The county is named for Peter Shannon, who was the Chief Justice of the Dakota Territory Supreme Court in the late 1800s. He served on a federal land commission to force the Sioux tribes to negotiate away their lands.”
– Indianz.com, Voters on Pine Ridge Reservation approve county name change.
“South Dakota’s map is about to change.
More than 80 percent of Shannon County voters (PDF) approved a measure changing the county’s name to Oglala Lakota County.
The county is heavily Native American, home to the Oglala Sioux Tribe.
It was originally named for Peter Shannon, chief justice of the Dakota Territory Supreme Court. Shannon was the judge in Jack McCall’s trial for Wild Bill Hickock’s murder, but more pertinently he helped negotiate a number of land deals with Native Americans — which served to transfer more land away from Natives.
Voter approval of the new name isn’t the end of the process. Under state law, the governor is required to “communicate the result” of the name change election to the presiding officer of each house of the Legislature at next year’s session. After that, South Dakota law says the Legislature “shall” pass a joint resolution designating the new name.
Once that happens, the governor “shall” publicly proclaim the new name, which takes effect on the first day of the first month following that proclamation.”
– Argus Leader, Shannon County no more: Voters approve name change.
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Download the 18″x24″ poster (.pdf), Indian Country 52 #45 – Oglala Lakota County.
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Indian Country 52
Indian Country 52 is a weekly project by David Bernie that uses the medium of posters that promote issues and stories in Indian Country.
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This work by David Bernie is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License. You may download, share, and post the images under the condition that the works are attributed to the artist.
