In one respect, Nebraska's Santee Sioux Reservation reached its low
point in the early and middle 1960s, when the population dipped be-
low three-hundred. The Santee post office had been discontinued in
1957, there were several vacant buildings in the village, and most of
the Indian-owned land (both tribal and allotted) was leased to white
farmers. One might have felt safe in predicting that the reservation
would soon be abandoned except for a few elderly people who had
nowhere else to go. Yet precisely the opposite occurred, with the re-
sult that Santee has become a busy, vibrant community, its popula-
tion and employment opportunities growing, its identity and sense
of Indianness revived.

Just when and why the turnaround occurred is not entirely clear.
It had begun before the end of the 1960s, and it was partly the result
of an infusion of federal funds during that decade. A housing proj-
ect created jobs, which in turn attracted people back to the reserva-
tion who had moved to Sioux City, Norfolk, or elsewhere in search of
employment. The change was perceptible by 1972, in the form of a
flock of new houses on the site of the former agency and the bit-
uminous surfacing of the road from Nebraska State Highway 12 to
Santee. These and other changes made it possible to venture the
guess that "there [might] be occurring a movement back to the reser-
vation and a revival of a sense of group identity." ¹

The revival at Santee has manifested itself in many ways and may
be considered under the headings of economic, educational, and
cultural (or spiritual) renewal. Although many members of the tribe
continue to leave the reservation, temporarily or permanently, to
find jobs elsewhere, there are more jobs at home than there were in
the early 1960s. Some of these are provided by the educational sys-
tem: a Head Start program, a kindergarten through twelfth-grade
school, and the Santee Campus of the Nebraska Indian Community
College. Many people work for the Bureau of Indian Affairs, the
Public Health Service, the tribal government, and the state of Ne-
braska, which contracts with the tribe. Bector Dickinson, a phar-

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