UNIT 1 • FREE

SD Tribal Nations

South Dakota is home to 9 sovereign Tribal nations - the Lakota, Dakota, and Nakota peoples of the Oceti Sakowin. Your first website is about them.

⏱️ 7 Stages
📱 Beginner
🎯 45-60 min per stage
💻 HTML Basics

The Big Idea

Every website you'll ever build starts with HTML. It's the language that gives a page its structure - headings, paragraphs, links, sections. If CSS is what a page looks like, HTML is what it says and how it's organized.

In this unit, you'll learn HTML by writing about something that matters. South Dakota's 9 Tribal nations - the Lakota, Dakota, and Nakota peoples of the Oceti Sakowin, the Seven Council Fires - have called this land home since time immemorial. They have governments, languages, and sovereignty that no state law created. Your first website tells that story.

By the end, you'll have a real webpage you can open in any browser. No design experience needed. No special software. Just code you wrote, about nations that are still here.

By the end of this unit, you'll be able to say "I can..."

  • Write HTML that creates a working webpage
  • Use headings to organize content the way real websites do
  • Add paragraphs, links, and images to a page
  • Build a site about South Dakota's 9 Tribal nations with accurate, respectful information
  • Open your file in a browser and see your code come to life

What You'll Build

A website about South Dakota's 9 sovereign Tribal nations - your first website, built from scratch.

Sections for the Lakota, Dakota, and Nakota communities of the Oceti Sakowin. Tribal names, locations, and information about each nation's history and presence today.

When you open it in a browser and see your code appear as a real page, that feeling is real. You built that.

This is where it starts. Every Native developer working in tech today had a first lesson. This is yours.

Your learning path

The 7 Stages

STAGE 1 Introducing HTML tags + page setup STAGE 2 Building Your List of Nations Unordered lists + items STAGE 3 Nesting & Organizing Nested lists + structure STAGE 4 Building a Page Hierarchy Headings h1-h6 STAGE 5 Connecting Your Page Links + navigation STAGE 6 Making Content Stand Out Bold, italic + emphasis STAGE 7 Your Complete Website Publish your Tribal page
Let's Begin →

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Sources

All cultural, historical, and Tribal nation content in this unit is grounded in reputable sources. We prioritize official Tribal nation websites, state and federal government resources, and Native-authored publications. If you are an educator or student who wants to explore further, each source below is a trustworthy starting point.

Official & Tribal Nation Sources

Academic & Educational Sources

Digital Citizenship

Educational Standards

This unit aligns with national computer science and technology standards as well as state-level social studies and media arts standards. You are viewing this unit as a South Dakota student or educator - the South Dakota standards are expanded below. All other state standards are also available.

  • OSEU.SS.H.1, Tribal Nations as Sovereign Governments (All Grades): Students will understand that Indigenous peoples of North America are organized into sovereign Tribal nations with distinct histories, governance structures, and legal standing under federal law. (The unit introduces all 9 SD Tribal nations not as historical peoples but as present-day sovereign governments. Students research each nation using official Tribal nation websites and state government sources, building the foundational understanding that these are governments - with digital presences, elected leadership, and treaty-protected rights - before writing a single line of HTML.)
  • OSEU.SS.G.1, Self-Determination and Tribal Governance (All Grades): Students will understand that Tribal nations exercise inherent sovereignty and self-determination in their political, cultural, and community affairs. (Choosing to build a webpage that accurately represents a Tribal nation is itself a small act in a larger tradition of Indigenous self-representation. Students are introduced to the idea that how a nation is described online matters, and that their role as a developer includes a responsibility to represent that information with accuracy and respect.)
  • OSEU.ELA.W.1, Research Writing for a Public Audience (All Grades): Students will produce clear and purposeful writing grounded in verified sources, appropriate to task and audience. (The descriptions students write for each Tribal nation on their webpage must come from official sources: Tribal nation websites, the SD Tribal Relations office, and state government databases. Students are writing for a public audience on a live web page, which raises the stakes of accuracy beyond a classroom assignment.)
  • CSTA 2-IC-21 (Grades 6-8): Discuss issues of bias and accessibility in the design of existing technologies. (Students research and represent Tribal nation information on a real webpage, practicing inclusive and culturally respectful representation from the very first lesson in the curriculum.)
  • ISTE 1.3, Knowledge Constructor: Critically curate a variety of resources using digital tools to construct knowledge, produce creative artifacts, and make meaningful learning experiences for themselves and others. (Students use official Tribal nation websites, state government databases, and Native-authored publications to research South Dakota's 9 Tribes, building the habit of prioritizing primary and verified sources from day one.)
  • ISTE 1.6, Creative Communicator: Communicate clearly and express themselves creatively for a variety of purposes using the platforms, tools, styles, formats, and digital media appropriate to their goals. (Students create and publish their first real webpage, making intentional choices about how to present Tribal nation information for a real public audience.)
  • OSEU Standard 1.1 (All Grades): Understand the history and contemporary status of the Oceti Sakowin. (Unit 1 introduces all 9 SD Tribal nations as the Lakota, Dakota, and Nakota peoples of the Oceti Sakowin. Students learn that these nations share a common heritage as the Seven Council Fires while each maintaining distinct sovereignty, governance, and identity.)
  • OSEU Standard 2.1 (All Grades): Understand the concept of sovereignty as it applies to the Oceti Sakowin and other Indigenous peoples. (Every Tribal nation introduced in this unit is a federally recognized sovereign government. Understanding sovereignty is foundational to representing Tribal nations accurately and respectfully online, and to understanding why how we build websites about these nations matters.)
  • SD CS 3-5.AP.01 (Grades 3-5): Model daily processes using a sequence of steps and find multiple representations of a problem. (Writing HTML tags in the correct sequence to produce a structured webpage introduces students to the concept of sequential instructions, the foundation of all programming.)
  • SD CS 6-8.IC.01 (Grades 6-8): Compare tradeoffs associated with computing technologies that affect people's everyday activities and career options in South Dakota and the world, as well as urban, rural, and reservation communities. (This standard explicitly names reservation communities. Students consider what it means for Tribal nations to maintain a web presence and how digital access shapes sovereign communication and visibility.)
  • MN Social Studies 6.4.18.1 (Grade 6): Describe how Dakota and Anishinaabe people today narrate their own history, including seasonal lifeways in the pre-contact period. (The unit covers Dakota peoples whose communities are present across the broader region including Minnesota, and introduces students to the distinction between Dakota, Lakota, and Nakota communities.)
  • MN ELA 6.3.3.2 / 7.3.3.2 / 8.3.3.2 (Grades 6, 7, 8): Create and share a multimedia or digital communication, choosing tools to meet the task, purpose, and audience, demonstrating understanding of digital footprint. (Students publish their first complete webpage as a unit deliverable, a public act of digital communication grounded in research about Tribal nations.)
  • MN Media Arts 2.8.2.3.1 (Grade 8): Create media artworks using transdisciplinary or transmedia production to express emotion and meaning, including simple web page design considering positioning with multimodal perception. (This is the only MN K-12 standard that explicitly names web page design as a learning example. Unit 1 is students' first exposure to building that kind of media artifact.)
  • ND CS 5.DD.1 / 6.DD.1 / 7.DD.1 / 8.DD.1 (Grades 5-8): Create and evaluate algorithms using pseudocode, flowcharts, or other visual tools. (HTML is a structured, precise language: students write tags in a defined order, open and close them correctly, and nest elements inside one another. Understanding this structure is an introduction to algorithmic thinking.)
  • ND CS 6.S.1 / 7.S.1 / 8.S.1 (Grades 6-8): Examine the positive and negative impacts of technology on how people live, work, and interact, including considerations of equitable access. (Students consider what it means for a Tribal nation to have or lack a strong web presence, connecting computing to Tribal sovereignty and digital equity from the first unit.)
  • ND Indigenous Language Standard 2.1 (All Grades): Learners investigate, explain, and reflect on the relationship of practices to the customs, traditions, and perspectives of the cultures studied. (The unit covers Tribal nations of the Oceti Sakowin whose communities extend across both South Dakota and North Dakota, including Standing Rock Sioux Tribe which spans both states.)