Nakota (or Nakoda or Nakona) is the endonym used by those Assiniboine Indigenous people in the US, and by the Stoney People, in Canada. The Assiniboine branched off from the Great Sioux Nation (aka the Oceti Sakowin) long ago and moved further west from the original territory in the woodlands of what is now Minnesota into the northern and northwestern regions of Montana and North Dakota in the United States, and Manitoba, Saskatchewan, and Alberta in Canada. In each of the Western Siouan language dialects, nakota, dakota and lakota all mean "friend". Linguistic history Historically, the tribes belonging to the Sioux nation have generally been classified into three large language groups: Lakota (; anglicized as Teton), who form the westernmost group. Dakota, (Dakhótiyapi - Isáŋyathi anglicized as Santee) originally the easternmost group Nakota, originally the two central tribes of the Yankton and the Yanktonai, The Assiniboine separated from the Yankton-Yanktonai grouping at an early time. For a long time, very few scholars criticized this classification. In 1978, Douglas R. Parks, A. Wesley Jones, David S. Rood, and Raymond J. DeMallie engaged in systematic linguistic research at the Sioux and Assiniboine reservations to establish the precise dialectology of the Sioux language. They ascertained that both the Santee and the Yankton/Yanktonai referred (and refer) to themselves by the autonym "Dakota." The name of Nakota (or Nakoda) was (and is) exclusive usage of the Assiniboine and of their Canadian relatives, the Stoney. The subsequent academic literature, however, especially if it is not produced by linguistic specialists, has seldom reflected Parks and DeMallie's work. The change cannot be regarded as a subsequent terminological regression caused by the fact that Yankton-Yanktonai people lived together with the Santee in the same reserves. Currently, the groups refer to themselves as follows in their mother tongues: Dakota people – Dakota, Santee, Yankton and Yanktonai Lakota people - Lakota or Teton Sioux Nakota - the Nakoda people, the Assiniboine and the Stoney Present trends Recently the Assiniboine and, especially, the Stoney have begun to minimize the historic separation from the Dakota, claiming a shared identity with the broader Sioux Nation. This can be seen on Alberta's Stoney official Internet sites, for example, in the self-designation of the Alexis Nakota Sioux First Nation, or in the claim of the Nakoda people to their Sioux ancestry and the value of their native language: "As descendants of the great Sioux nations, the