1 Dollar Sioux

The Oglala Lakota Sioux Nation is a sovereign tribal nation based on the Pine Ridge Reservation in South Dakota — one of the largest reservations in the United States and among the poorest communities in the country by federal income measures. Tribal nations in the U.S. retain the legal right to issue their own currency, a function of the sovereignty recognized under federal Indian law, though such pieces circulate almost exclusively as bullion collectibles rather than transactional currency.

Pine Ridge sits on land ceded and then seized following the Fort Laramie Treaty violations of the 1870s, a political history that lends these issues a charged significance well beyond their metal content.