ABSTRACT
How did the world come to be the way it is today? And out of the infinite number of places in which a people could have lived, how did they wind up where they are now? How do they know where they belong, if they have a home at all, and what accounts for their strong attachment to a given place? For the Lakota, the answers are found in the story of the Four Winds. What follows then is neither a work of ethnography, nor will it address the ongoing legal issues surrounding Lakota land claims. Instead, what I am attempting to do is analyze Lakota land relations for the precepts and values that this tradition expresses, particularly in its creation mythology. For it will be through storytelling, especially of the creation story, that a uniquely Lakota sense of place will be expounded.
