A young U.S. lieutenant named Pike raises a flag and asks for a small piece of land. We give it, because hospitality is our law. We do not yet know that “small” will one day mean almost everything.

Ten million acres signed away in exchange for promises that evaporate like morning mist. Yet even as the ink dries, our grandmothers hide seeds in their hems and whisper to the children: “Remember who we are. The land will wait for us.”

Starvation, broken treaties, and stolen rations ignite a desperate defense of homeland. Six weeks that shake a nation. Thirty-eight warriors hanged in Mankato on December 26 (including a direct ancestor whose name still lives in our family) — the largest mass execution American soil has ever seen. The world thinks the story ends here. It only begins.

Four thousand Dakota forced south to Crow Creek — a barren prison where hundreds die the first winter. But some, the “loyal” Mdewakanton who sheltered settlers (our direct descendants among them), are allowed to stay. They return quietly to the river bends, carrying the fire no law can extinguish.

Congress finally acknowledges the debt. 120 acres on Prairie Island are purchased back — not granted, turned into trust. Our great-grandmothers step onto the soil and say: “This is still ours. And it always will be.”

On June 20, the Prairie Island Indian Community adopts its Constitution. We are no longer scattered families. We are a nation again.

The first bingo hall rises. By 1990 it is a casino. The people who were told they would vanish now employ thousands, fund language programs, and buy back land mile by mile. Proof that when you bet on Dakota resilience, the house always wins.

Christopher, a direct descendant of the loyal Mdewakanton families, watches his young son suffer with eczema and his wife search for something real in a sea of synthetic creams. He returns to the old ways — grass-fed tallow rendered slow, wild Botanicals gathered under the same moon. The first jar is poured on trust land. It works better than anything money can buy.

The world’s first and only Mdewakanton Native-owned ultra-luxury skincare house rises from the sacred prairies our ancestors cherished and cultivated for millennia. From the earth's generous embrace—its wild rice fields and bison-kissed soils—emerges a glow as timeless and exquisite as the land itself.

When you open a jar of Dakhota Prairie, you are not simply buying skincare. You are putting on the distilled power of a people who turned “impossible” into legend. Your skin becomes the newest chapter. The quietest rooms will feel it. The loudest rooms will ask what you’re wearing. And you will smile, because you know: This radiance was forged in fire, carried through exile, and perfected across a thousand years — just so it could land on you. This is who we are. This is who you become.