According to some Lakota, they are the Red Star people who came to the Black Hills from the stars around 60 million years ago. Although lacking human form, they were still an oyate, a nation. Others contend that the Lakota were born in the Black Hills themselves in a place called Wamaka Og’naka Icante, the ‘heart of everything that is’ (Mikael, 2002). Traditionally, the Lakotas identified several natural features in the Black Hills with constellations. Each constellation, in turn, was associated with one story in the Falling Star myth cycle. Ideally, people's seasonal movements and their retelling of the Falling Star myths corresponded with these landscape features, those like the Race Track, a ring-shaped depression surrounding the interior
